Simon Fraser College (SFU) and Queen’s College are partnering to design and construct a nationwide sovereign, safe, and sustainable high-performance supercomputing system that can preserve Canadian knowledge and mental property in Canadian fingers.
The 2 universities have signed a memorandum of understanding, seizing the chance to mix unrivalled nationwide experience to supply world-leading high-performance supercomputing and companies for academia, authorities, and business.
Dugan O’Neil, vice-president of analysis & innovation at SFU, defined: “Canada wants safe, world‑class computing infrastructure to guide within the subsequent era of synthetic intelligence.
“By partnering with Queen’s, we’re bringing collectively the experience, expertise, and the national-scale services wanted for a sovereign platform that Canadians can belief.”
The rising want for high-performance supercomputing
AI supercomputers are the highly effective engines that prepare AI fashions, analyse large quantities of knowledge, and assist improvements in areas akin to well being care, clear vitality, defence, manufacturing, dual-use expertise, and public security.
Because the demand for AI grows, so does the necessity for robust computing infrastructure that retains knowledge safe and ensures it stays inside Canadian borders.
SFU and Queen’s convey deep, complementary expertise to this work. Each universities at present function trusted public high-performance computing platforms that assist a few of Canada’s most superior AI initiatives, together with these centered on essential infrastructure, life sciences, and subsequent‑era applied sciences.
SFU and Queens’ expertise within the HPC area
SFU is a world chief in supercomputing and AI analysis, operating Canada’s largest public supercomputing system that helps greater than 24,000 researchers and business companions nationwide.
The college additionally has agreements in place with firms throughout Canada to assist meet future supercomputing infrastructure wants.
Queen’s is the one college in Canada house to researchers who’ve helped design and deploy among the world’s strongest supercomputers, together with techniques ranked among the many international high ten in the US, Europe, and Asia.
“Queen’s is happy to accomplice with Simon Fraser College to assist strengthen Canada’s sovereign, sustainable AI supercomputing capability,” mentioned Nancy Ross, vice-principal, analysis, Queen’s College.
“This collaboration, which brings collectively complementary experience in high-performance computing and AI, will assist domesticate expertise and prepare the subsequent era of Canadian specialists.”
Constructing on Canada’s sovereign technique
This collaboration aligns with the Authorities of Canada’s Sovereign AI Compute strategy to construct a state-of-the-art public high-performance supercomputing infrastructure and to mobilise private-sector funding.
As a part of the technique, Canada is investing in a brand new AI supercomputing system by the AI Sovereign Compute Infrastructure Program.
SFU and Queen’s plan to collectively apply to the programme, which is anticipated to launch in 2026.
“The Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Technique is a gigantic alternative to create the way forward for world-class supercomputing infrastructure right here in Canada,” said James Peltier, director, Analysis Computing at SFU.
“By partnering with our colleagues at Queen’s, we are able to convey collectively deep experience in high-performance computing with safe, deployment-ready websites to assist a very nationwide useful resource.”
He added: “This AI infrastructure will assist researchers deal with essential challenges, from personalised medication and well being outcomes to inexperienced applied sciences to assist struggle local weather change.”
Cementing Canada’s digital sovereignty
Collectively, this partnership between SFU and Queen’s goals to speed up Canada’s management in AI, entice international expertise, strengthen nationwide digital sovereignty, and guarantee Canadian researchers and companies have the instruments they should compete globally.
