Telus Built Canada’s Fastest AI Supercomputer, Benchmark Data Shows

Telus’ new Sovereign AI Factory in Rimouski, Quebec has been officially ranked as Canada’s fastest and most powerful supercomputer, according to the latest TOP500 list. The system placed 78th worldwide, making Telus the only Canadian telecom provider on the list.

The TOP500 ranks supercomputers using the High-Performance LINPACK (HPL) benchmark, which measures sustained performance in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS). The official entry for Telus’ Sovereign AI Factory lists its speed as 22.74 petaFLOPS (that’s about 22.74 quadrillion calculations per second), placing it 78th worldwide and making it Canada’s fastest supercomputer.

(Update, Nov 18: Telus has confirmed the correct benchmark figure is 22.74 petaFLOPS. The original November 17 press release contained a typo listing the HPL score as “22.74 teraFLOPS” while correctly describing the system as performing “22.74 quadrillion calculations per second.” The company has updated its website and is issuing a formal correction on the wire.)

The system was built with HPE and uses NVIDIA H200 GPUs and NVIDIA’s Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking. Telus says the hardware is meant to support work in fields such as AI training, scientific computing, data analytics, medical research, climate modeling, and telecom network planning.

“This international recognition of Telus’ Sovereign AI Factory as the fastest and most powerful supercomputer in Canada and 78th in the world represents a defining moment for Telus and for our country’s position in the rapidly advancing global technology landscape,” said Darren Entwistle, President and CEO of Telus, in a statement to iPhone in Canada.

Unlike typical supercomputers hosted at universities or research labs, this system is operated by a major telecom company, and Telus says it plans to make the computing power available for Canadian public- and private-sector projects that require high-end processing.

HPE said it designed the system to “apply our supercomputing expertise to advance public and private sector innovation.”
The Rimouski site is intended to serve as a domestic option for organizations that want large-scale computing power without relying on facilities outside the country.

The TOP500 list is run by an independent group of HPC experts from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, the University of Tennessee, Oak Ridge National Lab, and the ISC Group. They publish the rankings twice a year, using the LINPACK benchmark to identify the world’s fastest supercomputers.