Press Releases

Compute Canada is launching an exciting new data visualization challenge this fall called Visualize This. Participants will visualize an Earth Sciences dataset covering the world’s oceans. The dataset will be available for download from the Compute Canada website from October 1-31, with submissions due by midnight Eastern time on October 31.

Participants from all science fields are encouraged to enter. Submissions will be reviewed by the Compute Canada visualization team. Points will be awarded for:

• interactive visualizations
• animations
• visualizing the 3D nature of the data
• online presentation, and
• clear innovative display of multiple variables

Prizes include high-capacity SSD drives or up to $1,000 towards registration and travel to HPCS 2017, Canada’s premier Advanced Research Computing (ARC) conference, hosted by Queen’s University in Kingston, ON (June 5-9, 2017). The top visualizations will also be showcased on the Compute Canada website and in Compute Canada’s booth at Supercomputing 2016 in Salt Lake City in November.

Want to participate in the “Visualize This” challenge? The first step is to indicate your interest here. Shortly before October 1, all registrants will be emailed a link to the competition dataset and the connection details for a Q&A Session on September 27. If you have any questions, please contact viz-challenge@computecanada.ca.

Each fall, through its annual Resource Allocation Competitions, Compute Canada hosts a Call for Proposals process for allocations of compute or storage resources. The 2017 Competitions kicked off on September 1st as Compute Canada launched the first stage of its Research Platforms and Portals (RPP) Competition, targeted specifically at applications that create new or support existing research platforms or portals.

Groups are encouraged to consider applying to the RPP Competition if their submission falls within any of the following categories:

• Resources requested on behalf of a large community of users that will be reallocated to individuals and small groups following the award.
• Applications that provide a public platform that will make use of Compute Canada computing or storage.
• Groups engaging in international agreements to provide multi-year computing or storage solutions based in Canada.
• Groups that are providing shared data sets accessible using a third party (non-Compute Canada) interface.

Allocations in the RPP Competition may be awarded over multiple years, up to a maximum of three years.

More Information:
For more information on the RPP Competition and other resource competitions for 2017, please visit Compute Canada’s Resource Allocation Competitions page. If you have questions about whether your resource needs fit within the RPP Competition, please contact rac@computecanada.ca.

Compute Canada has put out a call to name the four new national computing systems. This is our chance to put our stamp on those names, especially the two systems which will be hosted within Ontario — a large parallel system based out of the University of Toronto and a general purpose system at the University of Waterloo.

Submission Guidelines:
The names should be Canadian and work bilingually to reflect the national scope of these systems (you do not need to translate them). It’s an opportunity to promote and reflect some key Canadian attributes, such as our unique culture, landscape and geography, history and heritage as well as key scientific or research accomplishments. The name should also reflect strength, unbridled potential, discovery, new frontiers, power and exploration. We would like to include and consider aboriginal themes as well as female scientific accomplishments in Canada as we might be the first with a named prize or infrastructure installation celebrating these areas in research.

Email your suggestions to info@computeontario.ca by August 12th. More info

Nizar Ladak, Compute Ontario’s new President & CEO, discusses the importance of advanced computing. This is the first of an ongoing monthly series.

“I’ve always been fascinated by technology and its potential to “boldly go where no man has gone before.” Whether as a Trekkie growing up or, almost 30 years later, in a leadership role at a world-changing organization, it has long been clear to me that technology is redefining our world.

Though health care has been my focus, technology has been the through line of my career. Each position I’ve held over the years has had a strong information or technology component, because I see technology as a lever for change.

These are exciting times for advanced computing. Information is being generated from every imaginable activity and comes at us constantly from all corners of the earth. As a result, our ability to ask and answer questions has taken a giant leap forward." More

We are pleased to announce 2016 Ontario Summer School on High Performance Computing – West hosted by SHARCNET. This year, Summer School West will be held from May 30 – June 3 at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

Pre-register online NOW

The deadline for Summer School West pre-registration is May 20th at midnight. Please be aware that summer school registration is a two-step process. To finalize the registration one will have to click on a link in an email which will be sent to all attendees a few days before the event.

This five-day summer school includes lectures and labs on programming distributed and multicore systems and on various topics pertaining to scientific computing. Attendees will learn how to program distributed memory systems (networked computers) known as "clusters"€, shared memory multicore systems and GPUs. We will also cover common programming languages (including Python and Matlab/Octave) and software packages pertaining to specific research domains.

We are also running a Software Carpentry event in conjunction with our Summer School. This two-day event will teach basic lab skills for scientific computing, and will cover topics of a more introductory nature (including basics of Unix shell and version control) which are normally not covered by our Summer Schools. This workshop will take place on May 24-25 at McMaster University. To register, follow this link.

A long-running event for SHARCNET, Summer School was introduced to users over a decade ago. Summer School is now an Ontario-wide event which is organized and run through Compute Ontario.

Summer School (central) will run July 11-15 at the University of Toronto, and the University of Ottawa will run Summer School (east) August 8-12. 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 and Software Carpentry, registration is required.