ACEnet or the Atlantic Computational Excellence Network is a partnership of nine Atlantic Canada

Atlantic Canada

Atlantic Canada is the region of Canada comprising the four provinces located on the Atlantic coast, excluding Quebec: the three Maritime provinces – New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia – and Newfoundland and Labrador...

 institutions to organize themselves into a large scale high-performance computing

High-performance computing

High-performance computing uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Today, computer systems approaching the teraflops-region are counted as HPC-computers.-Overview:...

 (HPC) facilities for research. The nine institutions include; Memorial University of Newfoundland

Memorial University of Newfoundland

Memorial University of Newfoundland, is a comprehensive university located primarily in St...

, University of New Brunswick

University of New Brunswick

The University of New Brunswick is a Canadian university located in the province of New Brunswick. UNB is the oldest English language university in Canada and among the first public universities in North America. The university has two main campuses: the original campus founded in 1785 in...

, Mount Allison University

Mount Allison University

Mount Allison University is a primarily undergraduate Canadian liberal arts and science university situated in Sackville, New Brunswick. It is located about a half hour from the regional city of Moncton and 20 minutes from the Greater Moncton International Airport...

, Dalhousie University

Dalhousie University

Dalhousie University is a public research university located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The university comprises eleven faculties including Schulich School of Law and Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine. It also includes the faculties of architecture, planning and engineering located at...

, St. Francis Xavier University

St. Francis Xavier University

St. Francis Xavier University is a post-secondary institution located in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. The school was founded in 1853, but did not offer degrees until 1868. The university has approximately 5000 students.-History:...

, St. Mary's University

Saint Mary's University (Halifax)

Saint Mary's University is located in Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada. The school is best known for having nationally lead programs in Business, Astronomy and International Development Studies as well, one of the best football and Men's hockey programs in Canada .The campus is situated in Halifax's...

 and the University of Prince Edward Island

University of Prince Edward Island

The University of Prince Edward Island is a public liberal arts university in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, and the sole university in the province. Founded in 1969, it traces its roots back to its two earlier predecessor organizations, St. Dunstan's University and Prince of Wales...

, Cape Breton University

Cape Breton University

Cape Breton University , formerly the "University College of Cape Breton" , is a Canadian university in Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Regional Municipality....

, Mount St. Vincent University and Acadia University

Acadia University

Acadia University is a predominantly undergraduate university located in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada with some graduate programs at the master's level and one at the doctoral level...

.

ACEnet also partners with:

• CANARIE
  CANARIE
  CANARIE is a Canadian government-supported non-profit corporation, founded in 1993, which maintains a set of leased wide area network links for the transfer of very large data files. The core network consists of 19000 km of fibre optic cable capable of speeds as high as 100 Gbps but...
  
  
• Grid Canada
• C3
• The Canada Foundation for Innovation
  Canada Foundation for Innovation
  Created by the Government of Canada in 1997, the Canada Foundation for Innovation strives to build our nation’s capacity to undertake world-class research and technology development to benefit Canadians...
  
   (CFI)

ACEnet is one of seven HPC consortia in Canada that, under the newly announced National Platform Fund (CFI) will share resources and collaborate on various research projects that would never be undertaken by a single entity. The other HPC networks in Canada are:

• CLUMEQ
  CLUMEQ
  CLUMEQ is a Supercomputer Consortium Laval UQAM McGill and Eastern Quebec based in McGill University founded in 2001 and has received two successive grants from the Canada Foundation for innovation.-Past:Beowulf Cluster...
  
  
• HPCVL
• SHARCNET
• WestGrid
  WestGrid
  WestGrid is a government-funded infrastructure program started in 2003, mainly in Western Canada, that provides institutional research faculty and students access to high performance computing and distributed data storage, using a combination of grid, networking, and collaboration tools.-Principle...
  
  
• RQCHP
• SciNet

Current ACEnet projects

The Response of the Labrador Sea Environment to Global Climate Change

A research project to study the complex response of the Labrador Sea

Labrador Sea

The Labrador Sea is an arm of the North Atlantic Ocean between the Labrador Peninsula and Greenland. The sea is flanked by continental shelves to the southwest, northwest, and northeast. It connects to the north with Baffin Bay through the Davis Strait...

 environment to global changes to estimate expected future effects of climate change

Climate change

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

 in this region. With the goal of improving the capabilities of future operational short-term ocean predictions from weeks to months that will provide information that will contribute to extra security measures for the Canadian Coast Guard

Canadian Coast Guard

The Canadian Coast Guard is the coast guard of Canada. It is a federal agency responsible for providing maritime search and rescue , aids to navigation, marine pollution response, marine radio, and icebreaking...

.

Optimizing Location-Aware Data Management for Location-Based Mobile Commerce

A research project to determine the transaction processing challenges in mobile commerce

Mobile Commerce

Mobile Commerce, also known as M-Commerce or mCommerce, is the ability to conduct commerce using a mobile device, such as a mobile phone, a Personal Digital Assistant , a smartphone, or other emerging mobile equipment such as dashtop mobile devices...

 using location-aware

Location awareness

Location awareness refers to devices that can passively or actively determine their location. Navigational instruments provide location coordinates for vessels and vehicles. Surveying equipment identifies location with respect to a well-known locationa wireless communications device...

 data management practices to improve the level of transactional support provided by server-based informational resources to mobile users. The Genesis Group at MUN currently holds a US patent for the location-aware method.

Protein Folding

Protein folding

Protein folding

Protein folding is the process by which a protein structure assumes its functional shape or conformation. It is the physical process by which a polypeptide folds into its characteristic and functional three-dimensional structure from random coil....

 is a research project to understand the structure and reactions of molecules in the development of drugs and compounds.

Protein Mineralization

A research project to understand and to develop new therapeutic

Pharmacotherapy

Pharmacotherapy is the treatment of disease through the administration of drugs. As such, it is considered part of the larger category of therapy....

 applications of protein

Protein

Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...

 mineralization

Mineralization

Mineralization may refer to:* Mineralization , the process through which an organic substance becomes impregnated by inorganic substances...

. This project, by finding ways to manipulate the process of protein mineralization will effect the way treatment of health issues such as broken bone

Bone

Bones are rigid organs that constitute part of the endoskeleton of vertebrates. They support, and protect the various organs of the body, produce red and white blood cells and store minerals. Bone tissue is a type of dense connective tissue...

s and strokes.

Thin Film Magnetism

A research project of Thin Film Magnetism

Thin film memory

Thin-film memory is a high-speed variation of core memory developed by Sperry Rand in a government-funded research project.Instead of threading individual ferrite cores on wires, thin-film memory consisted of 4 micrometre thick dots of permalloy, an iron-nickel alloy, deposited on small glass...

 to identify and create new techniques for data storage

Data storage device

thumb|200px|right|A reel-to-reel tape recorder .The magnetic tape is a data storage medium. The recorder is data storage equipment using a portable medium to store the data....

 and data processing

Data processing

Computer data processing is any process that a computer program does to enter data and summarise, analyse or otherwise convert data into usable information. The process may be automated and run on a computer. It involves recording, analysing, sorting, summarising, calculating, disseminating and...

 and resulting in implications for high speed electronics. Research into fields which include auto magnetic materials, spintronics

Spintronics

Spintronics , also known as magnetoelectronics, is an emerging technology that exploits both the intrinsic spin of the electron and its associated magnetic moment, in addition to its fundamental electronic charge, in solid-state devices.An additional effect occurs when a spin-polarized current is...

, and nano-magnetic

Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...

 technology.

Star formation in high-redshift galaxies

Study of star formation and feedback in high-redshift galaxies. This project involves simulation of large cosmological volumes using adaptive mesh refinement

Adaptive mesh refinement

In numerical analysis, adaptive mesh refinement is a method of adaptive meshing. Central to any Eulerian method is the manner in which it discretizes the continuous domain of interest into a grid of many individual elements...

 to resolve the interstellar medium

Interstellar medium

In astronomy, the interstellar medium is the matter that exists in the space between the star systems in a galaxy. This matter includes gas in ionic, atomic, and molecular form, dust, and cosmic rays. It fills interstellar space and blends smoothly into the surrounding intergalactic space...

 in individual galaxies. The goal is to understand formation and evolution of young protogalaxies when the Universe was about 1-2 Gyrs old.

ACEnet Compute Resources

ACEnet currently has 5 Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 clusters. Sun Grid Engine

Sun Grid Engine

Oracle Grid Engine, previously known as Sun Grid Engine , previously known as CODINE or GRD , is an open source batch-queuing system, developed and supported by Sun Microsystems...

 is used for job scheduling.

See also

• Grid computing
  Grid computing
  Grid computing is a term referring to the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal. The grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve a large number of files...
  
  
• High-performance technical computing
  High-performance technical computing
  High Performance Technical Computing refers to the application of high performance computing to technical, as opposed to business or scientific, problems...
  
  
• Distributed computing
  Distributed computing
  Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems. A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal...
  
  
• Parallel computing
  Parallel computing
  Parallel computing is a form of computation in which many calculations are carried out simultaneously, operating on the principle that large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which are then solved concurrently . There are several different forms of parallel computing: bit-level,...
  
  
• Quantum computing
• Metacomputing
  Metacomputing
  Metacomputing is all computing and computing-oriented activity which involves computing knowledge utilized for the research, development and application of different types of computing. It may also deal with numerous types of computing applications, such as: industry, business, management and...
  
  
• Supercomputer
  Supercomputer
  A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
  
  
• Open problems in high performance computing

External links

• ACEnet official webpage