Compute Canada preparing for next CFI round to ensure HPC remains competitive

Greater industry participation urged

IBM's powerful GPC- iDataplex system installed earlier this year at Univ of Toronto's SciNet Consortium is the first of several new systems that promise to transform Canada's high-performance computing (HPC) environment. Part of a massive roll-out out being coordinated by Compute Canada (CC), the IBM system currently ranks #16 on the Top 500 list of the world's supercomputers and forcefully illustrates ongoing efforts to bolster HPC in Canada following the awarding in 2007 of $78 million by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI).

The CFI investment triggered a total of $178 million to upgrade several of Canada's regional HPC consortia and establish a coordinating and strategic planning mechanism (CC). That investment is now flowing with further results to be seen in the coming months.

"There's been a lot of progress in the last year … There's a lot being installed right now," says CC executive director Susan Baldwin. "It's really important that — if we want to give Canadian researchers a competitive advantage — they need the right equipment. Canada needs to keep investing."

While the progress today has been welcomed by academic users of HPC, a US observer of the Canadian scene says Canada needs to increase efforts to stimulate industry engagement to ensure that the increased computing power translates into enhanced industrial competitiveness and productivity.

Dr Cynthia McIntyre is executive VP of Washington-based Council on Competitiveness and head of its High Performance Computing Initiative (HPCI). McIntyre attended an HPC symposium in June and says the approach Canada is taking to coordinate and network its various regional consortia is to a powerful model. But she contends that there's work to be done to extend HPC's power to enhance industrial innovation and competitiveness.

"Canada has networked its HPC research centres together and that was very interesting to me," says McIntyre. "Integrating that into the industrial space is the next step … Industry is already part of the consortium (through representation on CC's Community Planning and Advocacy Council - CPAC) and I applaud them for doing this upfront. It's important to promote the industrial use of HPC assets."

CC currently has two industry representatives on CPAC — Don Aldridge, GM Research and Life Sciences at IBM Canada and Réal Corriveau, senior manager IT Infrastructure & Operations at Pratt & Whitney Canada. Members of other committees and the board of directors are virtually all drawn from the academic world, consistent with CC's mandate.

"The focus for Compute Canada is the academic environment in the near term," says Baldwin. "Our first priority is the growth of the traditional user base and the social sciences but industry input is also important."

Initial discussions are underway on how best to increase industry engagement but any concrete initiatives won't occur until CC develops a new strategic plan in preparation for applying to the next major CFI competition in 2010. An exercise to replace the 2005 plan (updated in 2007) is in the early stages and is being spearheaded by a CPAC sub-committee. Baldwin says its work should be completed by spring 2010.

The new strategic plan will position CC for an application to the next CFI competition to be launched by December 2010. In the 2009 federal Budget, $600 million was set aside for this purpose and is designed to target priority areas jointly identified by the CFI and Industry Canada (R$, July 8/09). By that time, CC will have been able to compile statistics demonstrating demand for existing facilities, providing a much clearer picture of what will be required in the years ahead.

Baldwin notes that while there is much work to be done engaging industry, CC is not starting from zero. Several research projects being undertaken by regional HPC consortia have industry participants, such as General Motors, Mitsui Chemicals and Nova Chemicals. The latter has employed a molecular modeling program developed by the Univ of Ottawa's Dr Tom Woo to develop new catalysts for producing safe plastics in mass quantities.

Canada's industry engagement pales in comparison to the US HPC environment which has long focused on encouraging industry collaboration in a wide range of sectors. The Council on Competitiveness' HPCI has a 35-member advisory committee with a majority of members drawn from industry. Those industry members represent hardware and software vendors including smaller companies in the supply chain for larger firms, with university presidents and labour leaders completing the mix. Industry members represent the automotive, oil and gas, textile and industrial design communities.

The Council's mandate includes identifying the applications needs and priorities of the private sector, identifying workforce and training needs to integrate HPC into industry and leveraging resources and expertise through public-private partnerships. Mcintyre says Canada should look seriously at expanding CC's activities towards similar activities.

"It's important to promote industrial use of HPC assets including hardware, software and human assets and bring those to bare on problems and opportunities that industry has in production and design" she says. "Compute Canada is young and in development but has broad outreach and strong vision. It needs to pull in actual industrial representation."

One area which CC is actively reaching out to is the health research community. A Toronto workshop will be held this November that will include industry participation. In the past CFI has funded some smaller HPC projects with a health research focus. But much more needs to be done to encourage the health research community to fully embrace HPC.

CC board chair Dr Andrew Woodsworth says it's critical to involve the health research community, but any serious outreach will be limited by the current funding environment.

"The amount of Canadian funding is not enough to serve the existing community. Compute Canada needs to try again with government to address the needs of the medical research community," says Woods-worth, a former DG with the National Research Council.

In the meantime, CC has successfully established several committees to handle specific aspects of HPC development, including a national database for the allocation of existing and pending resources and a new HPC architecture committee to determine future requirements for the research community.

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