Facilities

COMPUTATIONAL FACILITIES

For our computational research, we have access to a number of world's largest supercomputing facilities provided in coordination with SciNet at University of Toronto and Compute/Calcul Canada.

We are members of the University of Toronto SciNet High Performance Computing Consortium, which is Canada's largest supercomputer centre, providing Canadian researchers with the computational resources and expertise necessary to perform their research on scales not previously possible in Canada. With system size in excess of 30,000 cores, it is one of the largest supercomputing facility in the world. In terms of performance, it currently ranks 4th in Canada and 67th in the world. November 2011 TOP500). SciNet is funded by: the Canada Foundation for Innovation under the auspices of Compute Canada; the Government of Ontario; Ontario Research Fund - Research Excellence; and the University of Toronto. We currently have access to more than 400 processor years and 5TB disk space on SciNet, with plans to enhance it even more in near future (as we get more projects and more members).

Compute/Calcul Canada is a national platform of advanced computing resources across the country, bringing together computer and data resources, academic researchers, and computational expertise to tackle some of the Canada's biggest research questions. Combining SciNet and Briaree (RQCHP), we currently have access to more than 600 processor years and 10TB disk space in total.

The RQCHP (Briaree) is a consortium of five Quebec institutions of higher education whose mission is to provide researchers of these institutions with world-class high-performance computing (HPC) facilities, in addition to training and support from HPC professionals. The RQCHP is part of the Compute Canada collaboration, which ensures access to HPC facilities for all researchers in Canada. At Briaree, we currently have access to more than 200 processor years and 3TB disk space.

Computational Lab

Our computational lab is located in WB 176. Each member of our lab gets a workstation with dual-boot Linux/Windows operating systems towards learning and developing computational codes/softwares, and carrying day-to-day tasks of his/her research. These systems are also catered towards medium to large-scale computer simulations. For large scale simulations, we remotely connect to SciNet, RQCHP and other Compute/Calcul Canada facilities and submit jobs.

Engineering Computing Facility (ECF) Lab

ECF provides a variety of computing services for teaching and research within the Faculty, as well as offering support for departmental computers and computer communication throughout the Faculty. Every undergraduate and graduate student in the Faculty is entitled to an ECF account, and relatively few constraints are placed on the usage of the system. The intention is to have the computing system used as often as the student requires it in his or her studies, just as one might use a library or other communal resource.

EXPERIMENTAL FACILITIES

In order to validate our computational models and physically realize our proposed novel material designs, we work in close coordination with expert experimentalists inside our department and University of Toronto at large. If need be, we also have access to external experimental facilities.