SHARCNET

SHARCNET (Shared Hierarchical Academic Research Computing Network) is a consortium of colleges and universities in South Western Ontario that have joined in a "cluster of clusters" of high performance computers, linked by optical fiber (provided by ORION). SHARCNET exists to enable world-class computational research so as to accelerate the production of research results.

The vision is to establish a world-leading, multi-university and college, interdisciplinary institute with an active academic-industry partnership, enabling forefront computational research in critical areas of science, engineering and business.

History

Prior to the first SHARCNET project, the lack of competitive high-performance computing programs and services was seen by a critical mass of researchers as a failure in Canada. Thus, a move and decision was made by a group of researchers to address this through a joint grant application, involving a number of institutions in Southwestern Ontario. This led to the creation of SHARCNET. In the face of rapid hardware obsolescence for HPC hardware, SHARCNET's key objective was to build an "HPC culture" in Ontario and Canada: a community of skilled researchers which would support the growing demands in academia and the private sector for HPC and would generate the critical mass of users to ensure long-term support/provision of leading hardware resources. SHARCNET aimed to directly target researchers with large problems which could not otherwise be contemplated.

Formally established in June 2001, SHARCNET is the culmination of the vision of faculty from McMaster University (Hugh Couchman), The University of Western Ontario (Peter Poole, Allan MacIsaac, Mike Bauer, Nils Petersen) and the University of Guelph (Deborah Stacey). These individuals developed the successful grant applications to the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), Ontario Innovation Trust (OIT) and the Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund (ORDCF) to create SHARCNET. These funds resulted in the installation of massively parallel computing systems across the SHARCNET institutions, as well as the research programs (Chairs and Fellowships), which were the first among other HPC centres in Canada. Further grant applications to CFI and OIT, awarded in 2004, allowed SHARCNET to significantly upgrade and expand its infrastructure.

In addition to its academic partners, SHARCNET's success wouldn't be possible without its industrial partners, most notably the generous financial contributions of Hewlett-Packard (formerly Compaq Canada). SHARCNET's private sector partners also include: Platform Computing, Bell Canada, Nortel Networks, Quadrics Supercomputing World, Optical Regional Advanced Network of Ontario (ORANO) and Silicon Graphics.

Partners

The SHARCNET community consists of 16 academic institutions in Ontario which are bound by an Institutional Operating Agreement, administered by the University of Western Ontario. The consortium brings together the strength of leading institutions, their cutting-edge research programs and highly qualified personnel to facilitate a collaborative environment that is unparalleled in Canada.

SHARCNET is founded on an academic-industry partnership, which brings together these leading institutions with world-leading technology providers, to provide SHARCNET’s pool of outstanding researchers with extensive collaborative opportunities and access to leading-edge computational infrastructure.

;Founding members (June 2001)
* University of Western Ontario
* University of Guelph
* McMaster University
* Wilfrid Laurier University
* University of Windsor
* Fanshawe College
* Sheridan College

;New partners (June 2003)
* University of Waterloo
* Brock University
* University of Ontario Institute of Technology
* York University

;New partners (December 2005)
* Trent University
* Laurentian University
* Lakehead University

;New partners (March 2006)
* Ontario College of Art and Design
* Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

;Affiliated partners
* Robarts Research Institute
* Fields Institute for Mathematical Sciences

External links

* [http://www.sharcnet.ca/ SHARCNET.ca] – Official website