Queen’s University and Simon Fraser University (SFU) are partnering to design and build a national sovereign, secure, and sustainable supercomputing system to grow Canada’s research and development capabilities. The two universities have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to work together, sharing expertise to deliver scalable computing to academia, government, and industry from coast to coast.

Both universities currently operate public computing platforms that support Canadian AI projects, including those focused on critical infrastructure, life sciences, and next generation technologies. With this agreement in place, Canada would become home to its first global top-10 supercomputer, hosted by Queen’s in Kingston, Ont., and a global top-25 supercomputer in B.C, hosted by SFU. This model intends to operate as a “made in Canada” system, working with Canadian vendors and suppliers to drive innovation in sustainable computing.

Image Source: Adobe

SFU currently operates Canada’s largest public supercomputing system, reportedly supporting more than 24,000 researchers and industry partners nationwide. For the past five years, SFU has been ranked as Canada’s top university in the World University Ranking for Innovation (WURI). Queen’s is reportedly the only university in Canada home to researchers who have helped design and deploy supercomputers. Queen’s also runs the Centre for Advanced Computing, a research data centre and analytics hub, as well as CAESAR Lab, the country’s largest group of experts on the design and build of exascale systems in Canada.

SFU and Queen’s plan to jointly apply to the AI Sovereign Compute Infrastructure Program through the federal government which is expected to launch in 2026.

“Queen’s is pleased to partner with Simon Fraser University to help strengthen Canada’s sovereign, sustainable AI supercomputing capacity… As we have seen from global leaders in the space, advanced computing infrastructure that is partnered with research and academia will strengthen Canada’s economic competitiveness, enable breakthrough research at scale, safeguard digital sovereignty, and ensure we have the infrastructure needed to thrive in an increasingly AI-driven world,” said Nancy Ross, vice-principal, research, Queen’s University.