Simon Fraser University (SFU) has partnered with Queen’s University to design and build a national supercomputing platform.

The two Canadian universities signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the delivery of the infrastructure, which will be made available to government and industry across the country.

In a statement, the institutions said the collaboration aligns with the Government of Canada’s Sovereign AI Compute strategy to build a state-of-the-art, public supercomputing infrastructure, supported by private sector investment.

The strategy will also see the Canadian government invest in a new AI supercomputing system through the AI Sovereign Compute Infrastructure Program. Both SFU and Queen's plan to jointly apply to the program, which is expected to launch in 2026.

The two universities already operate high-performance computing systems at their respective campuses. SFU hosts the 19.96 petaflops supercomputer dubbed Fir, comprising AMD Epyc 9454 CPUs and Nvidia H100 GPUs. It ranked 78 on the most recent edition of the Top500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

Queen’s, meanwhile, is home to both the Centre for Advanced Computing – a research data center and analytics hub – and the Computing at Extreme Scale Advanced Research (CAESAR) Laboratory, which hosts the largest groups of experts focused on the design and build of exascale systems.

“Queen’s is pleased to partner with Simon Fraser University to help strengthen Canada’s sovereign, sustainable AI supercomputing capacity. This collaboration, which brings together complementary expertise in high-performance computing and AI, will help cultivate talent and train the next generation of Canadian experts,” said Nancy Ross, VP, research, Queen’s University. “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.”

Dugan O’Neil, VP, research & innovation, SFU, added: “Canada needs secure, world‑class computing infrastructure to lead in the next generation of artificial intelligence. By partnering with Queen’s, we're bringing together the expertise, talent, and the national-scale facilities needed for a sovereign platform that Canadians can trust. This collaboration strengthens our research community, supports industry innovation, and helps ensure Canada remains competitive in a rapidly evolving global landscape.”