Ambitions: Sparking Canada’s supercomputing renaissance | Queen’s Gazette (queensu.ca)

Compute Canada turned into Digital Research Alliance of Canada which offers Advanced Research Computing. The big centers are:

  • McGill University (Montreal)
  • University of Victoria
  • Simon Fraser University
  • Waterloo
  • University of Toronto

University of Toronto

In October, University of Toronto announced it was awarded C$52M to replace their Niagara system.1

Sovereign AI

In December 2024, Canada announced a Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy that calls for how to use a $2bn, five-year investment in sovereign AI. The salient points of the proposal:2

  • $700M to support public-private AI partnership projects, awarded on a competitive basis, that expand Canadian datacenters and supporting technology. This is called the AI Compute Challenge.
  • $1B for major capital investments
    • Most for a single, large sovereign supercomputing facility.
    • A small amount for a secure computing facility to be managed by Shared Services Canada and National Research Council of Canada
    • $200M of near-term investment to shore up domestic compute infrastructure
  • $300M to subsidize access to AI compute infrastructure through existing providers. This is called the AI Compute Access Fund.

Footnotes

  1. U of T receives $52 million to upgrade SciNet supercomputer

  2. Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy