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SHARCNET is issuing a call for proposals for Dedicated Programming Support Round XII. For this round, applications are encouraged that satisfy the programme objectives and priority will be given to proposals that meet one or more of the following conditions:

  • Propose an innovative project that will leverage the capabilities of the GP3 system, “Graham”, especially GPUs and FPGAs.
  • Propose a programme of work that deals with the efficient processing of large, heterogeneous datasets (“big data”) using a variety of data mining, machine learning or other analytics software.

Applications are submitted via SHARCNET’s webportal and are due by June 22, 2018 at 11:59 pm EST. Consultation with a SHARCNET HPTC prior to submission is required. Note that users must have a SHARCNET webportal account in order to access the online form.

Due to the current workload of SHARCNET programming staff, only a limited number of proposals are expected to be awarded in this round. For additional information, please refer to the application guidelines. Questions should be addressed to research-support@sharcnet.ca.



We are pleased to announce 2018’s Compute Ontario Summer School on High Performance Computing. The SHARCNET offering (West) is being held May 28 – June 1, 2018 at Western University.

Register online NOW. Online registration is open until 23:59, Fri, May 25, 2018.

A long-running event for SHARCNET, Summer School was introduced to users over a decade ago. Summer School is now an Ontario-wide event taking place at three campuses every year. Summer School Central will run June 11 – June 15, 2018 at the University of Toronto, and Queen’s University will host Summer School East from July 30 – August 3, 2018. Note that the courses offered by the three sites may be slightly different. Please check the site specific programs for details.

While there is no fee to attend Summer School, registration is required. For more information, check out our Summer School preview.



With just one month to go, registration is gaining momentum for Ontario’s Advanced Research Computing Congress! Building on the 30-year history of High Performance Computing Symposium (HPCS) – Canada’s premiere HPC Conference – Compute Ontario has launched Ontario Advanced Research Computing Congress (OARCC). This reinvigorated event offers researchers, policy makers, technical, and administrative leaders a forum to showcase the latest research trends, discoveries, and technical achievements in the ARC sector. OARCC is a multidisciplinary gathering of thought leaders and practitioners in high performance computing. Register today.



SHARCNET is pleased to announce the results of its Round XI Dedicated Programming Support competition. The primary objectives of this program are to enable key research projects with the potential for exceptional and lasting impact that require significant programming support to proceed, and facilitate optimal exploitation of SHARCNET’s or Compute Canada’s computing infrastructure for internationally leading research.

In this Round, programmer allocations have been made to the following researchers:

  • Susan Brown, English and Theatre Studies, University of Guelph
  • Natalia Ivanova, Physics, University of Alberta
  • Marek Stastna, Applied Mathematics, University of Waterloo

SHARCNET plans to run another competition in late Spring of 2018. Please visit our DP website for more information. Congratulations to our Round XI awardees!



On Jan 30 all legacy SHARCNET systems (this does not include “Graham”) will be unavailable for approximately 2 days. During this time we will move users off of some older, unstable storage to a new storage array. All files will be moved and users should not notice any difference when logging back in after the outage. We will also be patching the systems to address the recently identified Spectre and Meltdown security vulnerabilities.

Our team constantly patches issues and this is mostly done transparently to users. In this case a full reboot is required and all jobs will be lost.

This issue, along with the majority of recent security alerts are called local exploits. That means the systems can not be compromised by a remote attack, it must be done after correctly logging into the cluster. All users are encouraged to protect their passwords and ssh keys. Security is everyone’s responsibility.

How to choose a password.



SHARCNET is issuing a call for proposals for Dedicated Programming Support Round XI. For this round, applications are encouraged that satisfy the programme objectives and priority will be given to proposals that meet one or more of the following conditions:

  • Propose an innovative project that will leverage the capabilities of the new GP3 system, “Graham”, especially GPUs and FPGAs.
  • Propose a programme of work that deals with the efficient processing of large, heterogeneous datasets (“big data”) using a variety of data mining, machine learning or other analytics software.

Applications are submitted via SHARCNET’s webportal and are due by December 10, 2017. Consultation with a SHARCNET HPTC prior to submission is required. Note that users must have a SHARCNET webportal account in order to access the online form.

Due to the current workload of SHARCNET programming staff, only a limited number of proposals are expected to be awarded in this round. For additional information, please refer to the application guidelines. Questions should be addressed to research-support@sharcnet.ca.



Compute Canada is now accepting applications to its annual Resource Allocation Competitions (RAC): Resources for Research Groups (RRG) Competition and the Research Platforms and Portals (RPP) Competition.

These competitions are open to all researchers based at Canadian academic institutions who are eligible to apply for funding to the federal granting agencies. Applications are evaluated for both technical feasibility and scientific excellence, and researchers who need more resources than are available through the Rapid Access Service (RAS) are encouraged to apply.

All proposals must be submitted electronically through the Compute Canada DataBase (CCDB) by Thursday, November 16, 2017 at 10:00 PM EST.



SUNNYVALE, Calif. & YOKNEAM, Israel, May 15, 2017 — Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. (NASDAQ: MLNX), a leading supplier of high-performance, end-to-end smart interconnect solutions for data center servers and storage systems, today announced that the University of Waterloo selected Mellanox EDR 100G InfiniBand solutions to accelerate their new supercomputer. The new supercomputer will support a broad and diverse range of academic and scientific research in mathematics, astronomy, science, the environment and more.

The University of Waterloo is a member of SHARCNET (www.sharcnet.ca), a consortium of 18 universities and colleges operating a network of high-performance compute clusters in south western, central and northern Ontario, Canada.

“The growing demands for research and supporting more complex simulations led us to look for the most advanced, efficient, and scalable HPC platforms,” said John Morton, technical manager for SHARCNET. “We have selected the Mellanox InfiniBand solutions because their smart acceleration engines enable high performance, efficiency and robustness for our applications.”

“One of the unique challenges of academic computing lies in a university’s need to support a very broad range of applications and workflows,” said Gilad Shainer, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “Mellanox smart InfiniBand solutions deliver the highest performance, scalability and efficiency for a variety of workloads, and also ensure backward and future compatibility, protecting the university’s investment.”

The University of Waterloo system is using Mellanox’s EDR 100Gb/s solutions with smart offloading capabilities to maximize system utilization and efficiency. The system also includes Mellanox’s InfiniBand to Ethernet gateways to provide seamless access to an existing Ethernet-based storage platform.

Located in Southern Ontario, Canada, University of Waterloo’s supercomputer serves a diverse faculty, supporting both undergraduate and graduate research across a wide range of disciplines including Applied Health Sciences, Arts, Engineering, Environment, Math, and Science as well as leading edge research in astronomy. More info