$88 Million Investment Creates National High Performance Computing Network

 - BACKGROUNDER: Previous CFI Investments in High Performance Computing

TORONTO, December 21, 2006 — Dr. Eliot Phillipson, President and CEO of the Canada Foundation for Innovation, was joined by Ms. Isabelle Blain, Vice-President, Research Grants and Scholarships on behalf of Dr. Suzanne Fortier, President of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Honourable Peter Van Loan, President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and Minister for Sport, on behalf of the Honourable Maxime Bernier, Minister of Industry, to announce an investment of $88 million for the creation of the first ever pan-Canadian network of High Performance Computing (HPC) facilities, a national resource that will benefit the entire spectrum of research in Canada.

“Today’s investment marks the first time that the CFI has identified a research area of strategic priority for the country and brought together all stakeholders—universities, provincial and federal funding agencies, and private sector partners—to collaborate on the development of a purposefully shared pan-Canadian resource”, says Minister Van Loan.

The process leading up to this announcement mobilized Canada’s entire HPC community—previously operating asseparate regional consortia competing for resources—to work together on the development of a unified HPC strategy for Canada. This major investment will ultimately benefit more than 6,000 investigators doing intensive computationally-based research at over 60 institutions across the country.

“This represents a major leap forward for Canada’s HPC community,” said Dr. Phillipson. “This is a truly national effort, with all seven HPC consortia across the country collaborating as full partners in this project. This investment will provide researchers with the tools to solve large-scale computational problems that we could not even have imagined tackling 10 years ago.”

Over the past several years, rapid developments in HPC technology have revolutionized the way research is done. Capable of performing calculations thousands of times faster than a regular desktop computer, HPC technology can produce results in a single day that would normally take a year or more.

“High performance computing is a critical tool in many areas of research that NSERC funds, including astronomy, chemistry, engineering, and mathematics,” said Ms. Blain. “We are extremely pleased to collaborate with CFI in funding this project, which is critical for the maintenance of a research environment that fosters discovery and innovation for the benefit of all Canadians.”

The $88 million investment announced today breaks down as follows:

• $60 million was awarded by the CFI under its National Platforms Fund (NPF). This new program was designed to provide the Canadian research community with infrastructure and resources that serve the needs of researchers working in a wide variety of research areas at institutions across the country.
• Another $18 million was awarded by the CFI under its existing Infrastructure Operating Fund (IOF), which assists institutions with the incremental operating and maintenance costs associated with new infrastructure projects.
• Finally, NSERC has committed a minimum of $10 million over 5 years to help fund the operating costs associated with the new HPC infrastructure investment.

A complete list of the projects funded to date and a list of the approved funding for this announcement are available here.

NSERC is a federal agency whose role is to make investments in people, discovery and innovation for the benefit of all Canadians. The agency supports some 22,000 university students and postdoctoral fellows in their advanced studies. NSERC promotes discovery by funding more than 10,000 university professors every year and fosters innovation by encouraging more than 800 Canadian companies to participate and invest in university research projects. Over the last ten years, NSERC has invested $6 billion in basic research, university-industry projects, and the training of Canada's next generation of scientists and engineers.

The Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) is an independent corporation created by the Government of Canada to fund research infrastructure. The CFI’s mandate is to strengthen the capacity of Canadian universities, colleges, research hospitals, and non-profit research institutions to carry out world-class research and technology development that benefits Canadians.

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