Government-sponsored Canadian HPC is funded through ISED and, as of 2025, has two major components:
- Digital Research Alliance of Canada, a non-profit which deploys national digital research infrastructure
- Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy, a $2 billion effort to develop and promote domestic human and capital to support AI.
As of September 2024, Canada is the only G7 nation without a Top 25 supercomputer, and Canada’s public supercomputers are not available for industrial uses.[^2]
Unlike the US national HPC efforts, Canada favors an arm’s-length nonprofit model of funding national cyberinfrastructure. Whereas DOE or NSF might sponsor FFRDCs or universities to deploy and manage HPC infrastructure, Canada sponsors non-profits (like DRAC) which are created and established explicitly to do this. Government Canada does not take as much of a hands-on approach in these nonprofits as DOE or NSF would for their investments.
Organizations and efforts
Government Canada maintains a list of organizations that have signed its Voluntary Code of Conduct on the Responsible Development and Management of Advanced Generative AI Systems which is a good starting point of Canadian parties interested in AI.1
Digital Research Alliance of Canada
Formerly Compute Canada. See Digital Research Alliance of Canada.
Mitacs
Mitacs is a Canadian arm’s-length nonprofit that promotes partnerships between academia, industry, and government through technology. While not exclusively focused on HPC or AI, it sounds like they route government funding to industry to promote collaboration with public researchers.
Pan-Canadian AI compute Environment (PAICE)
Established in 2023, PAICE is an initiative led by a coalition of2
- Digital Research Alliance of Canada
- Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR)
- Canadian National AI Institutes (Amii, Mila, and Vector)
- Regional organizations (Calcul Québec and Compute Ontario)
- National host sites (Université Laval, University of Alberta and University of Toronto)
Like the Canadian sovereign AI efforts, it is funded by ISED, and is the organization that is the steward of three AI supercomputers:
| Name | Location | Specifications |
|---|---|---|
| TamIA | Mila (Québec City) | 22x 4-way H100 |
| Killarney | Vector Institute (Toronto) | 168x 4-way L40 + 10x 8-way H100 |
| TBA | Amii (Edmonton) |
Who is evaluating SCIP SOIs and proposals?
ISED is, but they have been receiving education on how other nations do these evaluations.
What is the balance of public/private partnership expected for this effort?
SCIP is similar; companies like Hypertec or Denvr cloud are unlikely to “prime” since the structure is likely to take one of a nonprofit with a large university-led component. Expect the SCIP systems to be large, on-prem systems.