IT Services // Research Computing
Research Computing at SFU
We are committed to supporting our university researchers from all departments. IT Services provide the following tools and services:
- Collaboration tools
- Web publishing tools
- Web applications
- Survey tools
- Storage services
- Identity and access management services
- Network services
- Computation services
- Consultation services.
To learn more about each tool or service, go to our IT Services for Researchers page or contact the Research Computing Group (RCG) for more information research-support@sfu.ca.
High Performance Computing
Researchers have access access to large-scale computing resources and large-scale storage facilities. Service is provided through WestGrid and Compute Canada and it is free for all researchers in Canada.
WestGrid operates high performance computing (HPC), collaboration and visualization infrastructure across western Canada. It encompasses 14 partner institutions across British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba - SFU is one of these. All computing resources are shared between the member institutions, i.e., researchers at SFU get access to compute facilities with several thousands of processors (cores) and storage facilities of several PetaBytes (PB). See the WestGrid web site 
for more details.
WestGrid is also one of seven partner consortia that make up Compute Canada , a national organization that is helping coordinate and promote the expansion and use of high performance computing in Canada.
Software
A large number of software packages is available through WestGrid. See the WestGrid software page for details.
SFU has a campus license for Maple that covers faculty and staff at SFU. Students must purchase their own license.
A wide range of other software packages is available from the ITS software site: