WestGrid high-performance computing grid launched with CFI and provincial support

Alberta and British Columbia have jumped to the fore in Canadian high performance computing (HPC) with the official launch of the Western Canada Research Grid (WestGrid). With core funding of $12 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the project also secured $6 million each from the BC Knowledge Development Fund and the Alberta Science and Research Authority, and $20 million from participating vendors.

The CFI is also contributing $3.6 million in operating costs over the three-year implementation phase, which will feature three major hardware platforms constituting nearly 1,500 processors linked through a grid architecture. The distributed computer grid is expected to be up and running this summer, using CANARIE’s CA*net 4 backbone as well as BCNet and NeteraNet (Alberta).

“This is a huge step in support of research in a huge number of areas,” says Dr Brian Unger, one of WestGrid’s five principal investigators, a professor of computer science at the Univ of Calgary and president/CEO of I-CORE. “Each institution will allocate its highest quality researchers. There’s no way one institution could put together this resource. Alberta put in $6 million and every graduate student has access to $44 million worth of equipment.”

The $48-million project is already attracting world-class researchers to the eight participating universities in the region. Dr Richard Foster left Hewlett-Packard’s Boston facility where he ran its HPC centre to become WestGrid’s chief technology officer in Vancouver. Dr Robert Simmons has been hired as its distributed systems architect and is responsible for designing the interface allowing the distributed processors to work in unison.

Including WestGrid, the CFI has now invested about $100 million in HPC across Canada, and it’s making a huge difference in the way research is conducted. Computer grids are like software tools that can be tapped by researchers developing or requiring bandwidth-intensive applications.

SUSTAINED INVESTMENT REQUIRED

Nearly all areas of research are now turning to computer grids to handle their large data requirements. Researchers in chemistry, physics, bioinformatics, proteomics, computer science , graphics and the arts are all expected to be heavy WestGrid users. But Unger cautions that the life of such leading-edge computational equipment is extremely short and will require future investments if Canada is to remain competitive.

“We will start to see results almost immediately but commercial benefits are a decade out. This infrastructure will have to be renewed two times before then. It has to be sustained,” says Unger. “(Dr David) Strangway and the CFI’s senior people understand the need for sustainability. The CFI has transformed the research landscape with its investments in HPC. NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council) and the provinces can’t do that.”

Yet problems are arising over the matching funds CFI requires for projects that it supports. Although the funds can theoretically be secured from any source, it is the provinces that are expected to come up with the matching 40%, and some like Alberta are balking. Alberta has allocated just $20 million for the next round of CFI awards, far short of anticipated requirements. If new funds are found, the encouraging initial influx of top quality talent to the province may stop.

“In Alberta we are turning CFI projects away. It’s really unfortunate,” says Unger. “We’re a rich province but also stingy as hell. Our GERD to GDP ratio is half the Canadian average.”

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