ACEnet

ACEnet ("Atlantic Computational Excellence Network") is Atlantic Canada's member in the national fabric of large-scale high performance computing (HPC) facilities. It is a partnership of seven institutions, including Memorial University of Newfoundland, University of New Brunswick, Mount Allison University, Dalhousie University, St. Francis Xavier University, St. Mary's University and the University of Prince Edward Island.

Since 1999, universities across Canada have been organizing themselves into regional groups to acquire and operate large-scale high performance computing (HPC) facilities for research. Several of these "HPC Consortia" now exist and each has received tens of millions of dollars in funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), provincial matching funds, and corporate partners.

ACEnet encourages region-wide collaborations among researchers at all Atlantic Canadian universities by establishing several ACEnet Institutes founded around research themes such as computational chemistry, materials physics, and computer science. Other ACEnet institutes will be organized as opportunities arise. To support the activities of these institutes such as hosting conferences, acquiring common software, bringing in speakers, etc., ACEnet will provide funds, administrative services, and state-of-the-art videoconferencing facilities.

ACEnet operates HPC facilities to rival the best in Canada and the world. These facilities are interconnected by CA*Net 4 between Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and the ORANS inside the provinces, allowing them to behave as a single, regionally distributed "computational power grid" of enormous capacity. ACEnet has also created and now operate sophisticated video-teleconferencing facilities to bind together our geographically dispersed research communities.