Case Study: Simon Fraser University achieves high-performance, energy-efficient HPC growth with Cornelis Networks Omni-Path

Simon Fraser University’s Cedar HPC Cluster Makes Large Impact in British Columbia

Simon Fraser University (SFU) needed to upgrade its high-performance computing capabilities to support diverse research demands after years of relying on aging cluster technology. This challenge was addressed by Cornelis Networks, whose Intel® Omni-Path Architecture fabric was selected to be the high-speed interconnect for the new supercomputer, named Cedar.

The solution implemented by Cornelis Networks provided a high-performance, low-latitude fabric that unified the entire Cedar cluster. This allowed researchers to run massively parallel workloads across the system's over 60,000 Intel Xeon processor cores for applications ranging from AI and molecular dynamics to social science research. The project established Canada's most powerful academic supercomputer at its launch, significantly expanded the scope of research possible at SFU, and even attracted external organizations to co-locate their hardware in the university's new, highly efficient data center.

Simon Fraser University

Martin Siegert

Computational Researchers