Photo Credit: John Morton
By Alicia Bowland
High-performance computing technology helps solve complex problems, execute analyses and store data far beyond the computational capabilities of a standard desktop or personal computer.
Canadian researchers have access to advanced research computing support through the country’s largest high-performance computing consortium, the Shared Hierarchical Academic Research Computing Network (SHARCNET). It links 19 Canadian academic institutions (14 universities, four colleges and a research institute) through a network of high-performance computers.
“SHARCNET is open and free to anyone doing academic computational research—that is, research using advanced computers for statistical analysis, simulation, data processing or any other computationally challenging work,” says John Morton, SHARCNET’s director of technology at the University of Guelph. “Generally, if it can’t be done on your desktop or laptop, then you come talk to us.”
SHARCNET was founded in 2001 by faculty members from the University of Guelph, McMaster University and Western University. As individual institutions lacked resources to run full-scale information systems, the three universities worked together to collectively house computing and storage resources for researchers.
Using advanced computational expertise, storage and hardware, SHARCNET supports software for many applications, including debugging, data, commercial, bioinformatics and visualization. Specialty systems, storage systems and visualization systems are designed to accommodate many academic research projects.
“Busy research labs shouldn’t need to run their own gear, take time administrating software stacks and user accounts, or anything of that nature,” says Morton. “SHARCNET is run with the foundation that computing should be a tool for research. The challenge of research should lie largely in the imagination of the researchers and the problems they’re tackling.”
Through SHARCNET’s national resource allocation program, researchers may apply for central hardware time and storage beyond what is available through general access. The organization’s dedicated programming support competition—now running for more than 12 years—is unique to SHARCNET and supports projects with potential for exceptional and lasting impact.
SHARCNET is supported by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, Ministry of Colleges and Universities, and through contributions from the host institutions, hardware vendors and other eligible research grants.