University of Waterloo supercomputer receives significant funding boost

Significant investment from the federal and provincial governments will help upgrade the supercomputer at the University of Waterloo (UW) and propel the potential for advanced research in computing.

Several dignitaries were on hand for the funding announcement at the University of Waterloo on Tuesday morning, including Members of Parliament Bryan May and Bardish Chagger, Ontario’s Minister of Colleges and Universities, Nolan Quinn, Dr. Ranil Sonnadara, chief executive officer of Compute Ontario, Dr. Charmaine Dean, vice-president of research and international at the University of Waterloo, and more.

According to May, more than $120 million is being invested, through the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, to upgrade supercomputers across the country, including at the University of Waterloo and the University of Toronto.

“Strong digital research infrastructure provides Canada’s researchers with the tools and services they need to turn big data into scientific breakthroughs,” said May. “The government’s investments in high-performance computing are helping to maintain Canada as a global leader in the innovation economy.”  

Around $42 million is going to UW to renew the high-performance computing and cloud storage infrastructure of the Graham systems, the name of the supercomputer.

The potential uses for this upgrade include the development of artificial intelligence models to push advances in medicine and even give researchers the ability to track the migration of various species to measure the impacts of global warming.

Dr. Dean noted that the last time the supercomputer at the university was given an upgrade of this size was in 2017. She said that this funding provides a significant improvement for the near future and beyond.

It’s not clear if this would be a 10-year investment, but it would certainly push us forward immensely in the next five years,” said Dr. Dean.

More than $50 million of the investment is going to the University of Toronto to upgrade their supercomputer, the Niagara system.

“This investment reflects Canada’s leadership in advanced technologies and, fittingly, builds on the legacy of U of T University Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Hinton who was recently awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics,” said Dr. Timothy Chan, associate vice-president and vice-provost of Strategic Initiatives at the University of Toronto.  “The University of Toronto is proud to collaborate with federal and provincial governments and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada to support access to Niagara, one of Canada’s fastest supercomputers, and drive our economy forward.”