High Performance Computing supercomputers

The Government of Canada’s High Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure includes the 2 most powerful supercomputers in Canada. They are among the most powerful commercially available computer systems in the world, according to the TOP500 supercomputer organization.

Shared Services Canada (SSC) manages the HPC solution. It includes 4 large-scale computing clusters.

Two of these clusters are the supercomputers, named after Canadian scientists. They run large-scale simulations to solve complex problems related to weather and climate.

The other 2 clusters prepare data for simulations (pre-processing) and format the results (post-processing) so they can be used by reporting tools.

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), one of Canada’s largest supercomputer users, uses the HPC solution to continuously run made-in-Canada models critical to producing:

• weather forecasts
• alerts and warnings that allow Canadian communities and emergency management organizations to prepare for extreme weather events
• future weather and climate projections

HPC-enabled environmental information contributes to the health, safety and economic well-being of Canadians. It is valuable to many in both the public and private sectors, including those involved in public safety, health, emergency management, agriculture, finance and transportation.

How the Government of Canada uses its High Performance Computing solution

Supporting Canadians and keeping them safe

Federal and other organizations that benefit from the outputs of ECCC’s use of HPC infrastructure include:

• Health Canada, for air quality alerts and wildfire smoke dispersion information
• Fisheries and Oceans Canada, for modelling sustainable marine ecosystems and safe marine navigation, including Canadian Coast Guard search and rescue missions
• Public Safety Canada, for responding to environmental disasters
• NAV CANADA, for safe aviation across Canada
• National Defence, for military operations at home and abroad

Contributing to Canada’s international commitments

ECCC provides climate simulation results for:

• the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments
• World Meteorological Organization ozone assessments and research into links between climate change and ozone depletion
• reports by a working group of the intergovernmental Arctic Council that monitors and assesses the status of the Arctic region with respect to pollution and climate change issues

Improving weather forecasts and climate services

Facts about the Government of Canada’s High Performance Computing solution

Powerful, secure and reliable

• SSC’s supercomputers, which form part of its HPC infrastructure, are installed with independent electrical, cooling and fire suppression systems to maintain security and reliability by way of a backup system.
• The computing power of SSC’s supercomputers is 15.5 petaFLOPS—peta meaning 10¹⁵ and FLOPS meaning floating point operations per second. This lets the supercomputers handle complex simulations and other challenging tasks.
• These supercomputers feature more than 1,576 petabytes of storage. Assuming a typical digital photo takes up around 4 megabytes, that’s the equivalent of more than 375 trillion digital photos.
• Besides the supercomputers, SSC’s HPC infrastructure includes Sarracenia, which is technology that quickly and securely transfers data from the 2 supercomputers so they are constantly in sync. The technology also ensures that the radar, satellite and other data is fed into the supercomputers and gets where it needs to go after it is processed, including to Canadian meteorologists and other countries’ weather offices.

Dedicated to science

The 2 supercomputers are named after Canadian scientists, in recognition of their contributions to the Canadian scientific community.

• Anne Barbara Underhill (1920-2003) was a Canadian astrophysicist who specialized in the study of hot blue stars, known as early-type stars. She perfected the mathematical equations needed to better understand the atmospheres of these stars.
• André Robert (1929-1993) was a Canadian meteorologist who advanced the science of numerical weather prediction. He was among the first scientists to use a computer model to successfully simulate the Earth’s general atmospheric circulation.

Since 2017, SSC has named its supercomputers after notable Canadian scientists every time it upgrades them. Previous iterations were named after:

• Harriet Brooks (1876-1933), Canada’s first female nuclear physicist
• Kenneth Hare (1919-2002), an environmental science advocate and one of the first to raise the alarm about carbon-driven climate change
• Roger Daley (1943-2001), an atmospheric scientist who helped construct the Canadian numerical weather forecasting system
• Sir Frederick Banting (1891-1941), one of the scientists who discovered insulin