The University of Toronto’s SciNet Consortium and IBM say they’ll build Canada’s most powerful and energy-efficient supercomputer. The machine is expected to be among the top 20 fastest supercomputers in the world -- 30 times faster than Canada’s current largest research system. It will be largest supercomputer outside the United States.
The SciNet consortium, which includes the University of Toronto and associated research hospitals, will use the machine for research in aerospace, astrophysics, bioinformatics, chemical physics, climate change prediction, medical imaging and the global ATLAS project, which is investigating the forces that govern the universe.
Capable of performing 360 trillion calculations per second, the supercomputer will pioneer a hybrid design containing two systems that can work together or independently, connected to a massive five-petabyte storage complex. (A petabyte is one quadrillion bytes.)
Construction will begin immediately at a facility just north of Toronto. The main computing systems are expected to be fully operational by next summer.
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University of Toronto to Acquire Canada's Most Powerful Supercomputer from IBM (press release)