Green supercomputer heading to Canada

Stephen Withers
Friday, 15 August 2008 08:29

Science - Energy

Canada's leading system on the current Top500 list takes 249th spot. It is an IBM pSeries used for weather forecasting by Environment Canada, a national government department.

But SciNet's supercomputer won't only be fast, it will also be energy efficient. IBM systems already dominate the Green500 list that ranks supercomputers by the number of operations performed per second per watt of energy consumed.

The new system is being funded by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the Province of Ontario, and the University of Toronto. It is being installed in a new data centre just north of Toronto.

"A system this complex could only be designed by bringing together the best minds from the University of Toronto and IBM," said Chris Pratt, strategic initiatives executive, IBM Canada.

"This is a tremendous example of public and private collaboration that will benefit the Canadian research community for many years to come."