Canadian high performance computing scores with $178-million in new funding

CFI: $78M; Matching: $90M; NSERC: $10M

The high performance computing (HPC) community has taken a major step forward with the awarding of $78 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) to establish a network of mid-range research facilities, realizing a major component of its long-range vision to become a world leader in computationally based research. The funding caps a long period of negotiations between the HPC community, the CFI and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) to take a coordinated approach towards bolstering HPC research capacity.

"This is very good news. It marks the first time that there's an understanding by federal funding agencies that HPC is a crucial tool for researchers in many fields," says Dr Hugh Couchman, scientific director of SHARCNET and a professor of physics and astronomy at McMaster Univ. "We've made a huge amount of progress and it's very gratifying."

The CFI's $60 million from its National Platforms Fund covers 40% of projects costs, which total $150 million once $90 million in matching funds are factored in. An additional $18 million in operating support from CFI will go towards defraying operational costs such as electricity and operating personnel. NSERC's support is for a minimum of $10 million and is being made through the Major Resources Support program (see chart on page 2). NSERC funding will support the salaries of HPC technical analysts. Prior to the award, CFI had made 10 HPC awards between 1999 and 2004 totalling $89.7 million.

Canada's HPC capacity is spread throughout seven regional facilities and the CFI award recognizes that they represent a single, shared resource for mid-range computing needs. The HPC Long-Range Plan released in 2005 recognized sustained, generational support for these facilities as the most pressing need for the research community. After consultations between the HPC community and CFI, a single proposal was developed and $60 million was identified as the maximum amount of funding available.

"We got 100% of what we asked for but the CFI set the target in advance after reviewing the LRP," says Bruce Attfield, secretary-treasurer of C3.ca Association Inc, an HPC advocacy group. "Each facility has specialized equipment and they need to be shared to gain access to their capacity. The strength (of the Canadian HPC model) is the diversity of researchers and the fact that any researcher can access the kind of research equipment they need in the timeframe they require. That's another strength … The willingness with which all these groups are in 100% agreement means there is a whole new era of national HPC upon us."

In Canada, major users of HPC are researchers involved in traditional and biochemistry, high-energy physics, astronomy and astrophysics, materials science, fluid dynamics and disease modelling.

C3.ca has been the main driver behind the push for HPC funding and has done a remarkable job of pulling the HPC research community together as a unified whole. But under CFI rules it was not eligible to receive funding, necessitating the creation of Compute-Calcul Canada (CCC), a consortium of Canada's major HPC facilities.

QUEST FOR HIGH-END FACILITY CONTINUES

Despite the success of the CFI funding initiative, Canada still lacks a high-end facility and an organizational structure to support the research community — the two other major recommendations of the HPC long-range plan (LRP). The CFI made it clear upfront that it was unable to fund all of the LRP's recommendations. The community is now looking elsewhere for support.

That includes federal HPC facilities such as the Environment Canada weather prediction facility in Dorval QC. While the Dorval facility's computing capacity has not been upgraded in many years, Attfield says it, or another federal facility, could serve as the HPC research community's high-end facility if funding can be secured. Couchman says the challenge is to receive approval and funding for a national facility without undermining what has been achieved with the community's mid-range facilities.

"A high-end facility will get you into the top 20 of the (Top 500) list," says Couchman. "Going forward, we hope that CFI will get new funding and will continue to support mid-range HPC ... "We're also pushing for additional personnel support. NSERC's new funding addresses this but we're still nowhere near the level of support required when compared to other jurisdictions."

Canada ranks 8th on Top 500 list

Canada's has eight facilities in the Top 500 list of global HPC facilities, ranking eighth in a tie with Italy (see chart below). Canada accounts for a modest 1.6% of the Top 500 supercomputer sites, a modest achievement proportionate with the nation's size and research base.

Not surprisingly, the Top 500 list is dominated by the US, with 309 sites accounting for 61.8% of the Top 500. Japan and the UK are next, each with 30 facilities and a 6% share. China and Germany each have 18 facilities for a 6% share each, followed by France (12) and India (10). Spain follows Canada and Italy for 10th place with seven facilities and a 1.4% share. Together, these 10 nations account for 88.6% of the Top 500 facilities in the world.

The rapid increase in global computing power shows no signs of slowing down. Between June and November/06, the performance of the last-placed machine increased by 35% to 2.74 teraflops. The first placed machine — IBM's BlueGene/L system, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — has an astounding performance of 280.6 teraflops (trillions of calculations/second).

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