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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Special Features:
$48 MILLION COMPUTING COMPLEX
AVAILABLE
The major resources in a $48 million project to provide high-performance
computing in Alberta and British Columbia are now available for general use by
the research community, scientists heading up the WestGrid project
announced.
The last aspect of beta-testing was completed this week, uniting three
major
supercomputing installations at the University of British Columbia/TRIUMF, the
University of Alberta and the University of Calgary, with a large storage
facility at Simon Fraser University.
"Over the past several months, we have been installing, testing and
expanding
the components of the Grid, in partnership with early adopters in the research
community. We are pleased to announce all resources are now available for the
larger research community," said Michel Vetterli, a physicist at Simon Fraser
University and the TRIUMF research facility in Vancouver, and one of the five
project leaders. "There is much talk about computational Grids, but many
problems must be solved to implement a working system. We are proud to be able
to say that as of today, we have in B.C. and Alberta one of the most advanced
computing environments for research available anywhere in the world."
The Grid-enabled infrastructure also includes major collaborative
facilities
known as Access Grid nodes, with a total of eight institutions all
inter-connected over dedicated research "lightpaths" on the existing
provincial and national research networks. The new resources are expected to
support advances in research in many disciplines, such as medical research,
astronomy, subatomic physics, pharmaceutical research and chemistry, where
large amounts of data are typically involved.
"The aim of providing Grid services is to make it easier for researchers to
access distributed computing resources –- in this case across Alberta and B.C.
-– and make them part of their own computational research environments," said
Rob Simmonds, WestGrid chief technology officer.
"We commend the WestGrid project leaders and staff for their vision and
commitment to building this powerful and innovative facility," said David
Strangway, president and CEO of the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI).
"This new research facility is an impressive example of the type of strategic
orientations and partnerships that are essential to ensure Canada's success in
the knowledge-based economy. This facility represents what the CFI is all
about: providing the tools to institutions and researchers so that they can do
the leading edge research that will benefit all Canadians."
WestGrid is funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Alberta Science
and Research Authority, British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund,
Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Silicon Graphics and the partner organizations.
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