Waterloo unveils largest supercomputer of any Canadian university

It’s housed at the University of Waterloo, it’s bigger than any other supercomputer at any other Canadian university, and its name is Graham.

The $17-million supercomputer, which was officially unveiled Friday, was paid for by the provincial government and the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

In addition to its computing power, it has more than 50 petabytes of storage. (One petabyte is equal to one million gigabytes.)

“Graham will give Canadian researchers and innovators the ability to compete and excel globally using big data and big compute tools,” Compute Canada CEO Mark Dietrich said in a news release.

More specifically, Graham will be used by researchers in fields ranging from artificial intelligence to genomics.

The machine’s name comes from Wes Graham, a former Waterloo professor who made a major impact on modern computing and on the school’s global reputation.