HPC community converges at HPCS2010

Supercomputers help Canada address world's top research challenges

TORONTO, May 20 /CNW/ - Canada's supercomputing community, responsible for some of the country's most exciting scientific discoveries and global research collaborations, will soon converge in Toronto to address how best to support some of the world's greatest research challenges.

HPCS 2010 (High Performance Computing Symposium), hosted by SciNet and Compute Canada at the University of Toronto June 5 to 9, is Canada's largest gathering of HPC researchers.

One of the goals of the conference is to raise awareness of HPC and the researchers who use these technologies to address some of the most important research "grand challenges" of our times, from finding the cure for cancer, to deciphering the mysteries of the universe.

"It's important to appreciate the benefits of Canada's HPC-enabled research and scientific collaborations. They have a direct relationship to our ability to compete and innovate and to create and sustain jobs in our new economy," says Chris Loken, Chief Technical Officer of SciNet, Canada's fastest supercomputer and one of the world's top HPC facilities.

ORION, which provides the enabling high-speed network infrastructure which allows some 30 Ontario institutions to engage in shared and distributed HPC resources and collaborations, is a major sponsor of HPCS 2010.

"Canada is making significant contributions to global research," says Phil Baker, President and CEO of ORION. "You can say that our HPC resources are helping Canada punch above its weight when it comes to significant and meaningful scientific discoveries, especially in the areas of the environment and climate change, physics and cancer research," he says.

Across Canada and around the world, research is increasingly dependent on access to high performance computing, dedicated high-speed research networks and data resources and tools. In Canada, these integrated resources represent close to a petaflop of computing capability and online and long term storage, with access and retrieval over Canada's national, provincial and territorial high-performance networks.

Suzanne Fortier, president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) is among the keynotes addressing the conference, which is co-presented by Compute Canada, the national organization that is implementing a powerful national HPC platform for research with seven partner consortia across the country.

Attending are research leaders from the consortia, including ACEnet (Atlantic Computational Excellence Network), CLUMEQ (Consortium Laval, Université du Québec, McGill and Eastern Québec), RQCHP (Réseau québécois de calcul de haute performance), HPCVL (High Performance Computing Virtual Laboratory - Queen's University), SciNet (University of Toronto); SHARCNET (Shared Hierarchical Academic Research Computing Network - Ontario); and WestGrid (Western Canada Research Grid).

Delegates will include computational researchers from all disciplines in industry and academia, computer scientists and vendors, including IBM, Intel, Dell and Microsoft among others.

Canada's extended research and education community, as well as partners from business and industry who want to learn more about the current state and future direction of HPC technologies and their capabilities, are invited to attend the conference.

Learn more at www.hpcs2010.org and at www.computecanada.org.

    
    About ORION
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Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network (ORION) is Ontario's ultra high-speed research and education network. It links 1.7 million Ontario researchers, scientists, students, teachers and staff who depend on ORION for teaching and learning and to enable their research collaborations and discoveries in physics, cancer research, environmental science and technologies, social sciences and the humanities and multiple other disciplines. ORION links users and institutions to each other, and through CANARIE - Canada's advanced research and innovation network - to high-capacity research and education networks, partners and collaborators across Canada and around the world. Visit www.orion.on.ca.

For further information: Media Contact: Tamara Stoll, Communications Officer, [phone], ext. 224, [email protected]