NEWS

Ostrava, 14th July 2022 – Scientists at IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center are developing a specialised software package that will make the study of proteins easier and faster. The advanced research opens up new possibilities for developing cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

The Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union began a few days ago, and with it, the first accompanying events related to this prestigious role. One of them is the traditional visit of ambassadors sitting on the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the Member States to the Council of the EU, which is taking place in the Moravian-Silesian Region from 7th to 9th July.

13th June 2022, Kajaani, Finland – The LUMI supercomputer is the first pre-exascale supercomputer of the pan-European EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and is now also the most powerful supercomputer in Europe. Its inauguration ceremony took place on Monday 13th June 2022 in Kajaani, Finland. LUMI offers European researchers a world-class tool for understanding complex phenomena such as climate change and applications of artificial intelligence, while also serving as a platform for international research cooperation. IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, which is part of VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, is also involved in its construction and operation. Czech scientists thus have access to this unique supercomputer through the services provided by the e-INFRA CZ research infrastructure, of which IT4Innovations is a part. 

The HPCSE 2022 conference, organised by IT4Innovations in May, brought together experts from HPC and related scientific disciplines. Andreas Lintermann, who has been working for a long time at the supercomputing centre in Jülich, Germany, and who is coordinating the European Centre of Excellence for Exascale Computing "Research on AI - and Simulation-Based Engineering at Exascale" (CoE RAISE) since 2021, accepted the invitation to present his work activities. We interviewed Andreas on this occasion to present an interview with him in the following lines.

One of the largest HPC conference - ISC 2022 - took place in Germany. IT4Innovations was also among the exhibitors, presenting the Ostrava supercomputing centre and its activities at its own booth.

Hamburg, 30th May 2022 – Its name is LUMI and is installed in Kajaani, Finland. Only a third of it is operational, but even this, with a peak performance of 151.9 PFlop/s, has earned it third place in the ranking of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, and even gold in Europe. We are talking about the long-awaited European supercomputer star - the LUMI supercomputer. It offers part of its computational resources to the scientific community in the Czech Republic thanks to the membership of IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, which is part of VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, in the consortium building this supercomputer.

Nearly 80 participants, 30 lectures, 11 invited speakers from six countries, and 30 presented posters. This is the balance of the four-day HPCSE 2022 conference, which took place from 16th to 20th May at the Hotel Soláň in the Beskydy mountains. The conference organized by IT4Innovations was held for the fifth time, but this time after a three-year break caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

On Monday, 25th April, we welcomed Helena Langšádlová, who has been the Minister of Science, Research, and Innovation since last December. She visited IT4Innovations during her business trip to Ostrava, where she held a series of meetings with representatives of local universities.

This spring, we have endowed ourselves with a brand-new seminar room, which is a representative place for conducting training, seminars, classes, and other events organized by IT4Innovations. The classroom, which can accommodate up to 37 people, including speakers, is equipped with state-of-the-art audio-visual technology that allows, among others, live streaming.

Ostrava, 13th April 2022 – Data room of IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB – Technical University of Ostrava boasts not only supercomputers but also high-capacity data storage facilities. The first one is the PROJECT storage, which significantly facilitates the work of researchers who calculate their projects on the Ostrava supercomputers. In the second case, it is the data storage facility of the CESNET association, which is one of the largest in the Czech Republic.

In early April, 58 scientists were granted computational resources for their research projects. This was in the framework of the Open Access Grant Competition (OAGC for short) and its 24th edition. A total of 1 497 623 node hours were distributed across the winning projects.

Great teamwork, clear communication of scientific results, and active writing of blog articles. These are the reasons why the jury of the international PRACE Summer of HPC Awards awarded Jenay Patel and Carola Ciaramelletti for their work on a project mentored by colleagues from IT4Innovations.

Three days packed with lectures with the latest findings from the HPC world. This was the EuroHPC Summit Week 2022, a conference that took place in Paris from 22nd to 24th March. The international supercomputing event was also attended by colleagues from IT4Innovations.

Institutions can apply for computational resources within Open Access Grant Competitions. The grant competition is announced 3 times a year (February, June, October) for employees of research, scientific and educational organizations.

Lukáš Halagačka from the Modelling for Nanotechnologies Lab at IT4Innovations has been studying the structures of silicon nanowires for the preparation of solar cells at the prestigious École Polytechnique in Palaiseau since February. The three-month internship at one of the most significant French technical universities is a continuation of long-term cooperation with colleagues from the Physics of Interfaces and Thin Layers Laboratory (Laboratoire de Physique des Interfaces et Couches Minces - LPICM). The experience gained could advance research on solar power at VSB – Technical University of Ostrava.

The newly established FIP Academy aims to connect researchers from all of the partner institutions of the Fraunhofer Innovation Platform for Applied Artificial Intelligence for Materials & Manufacturing at VSB - Technical University of Ostrava via regular online seminars. The first seminar will take place on 3rd February, and the presenters will be Ladislav Foltyn from IT4Innovations and Vladislav Kolarik from Fraunhofer ICT.

Scientists from the Czech Advance Technology and Research Institute (CATRIN) of Palacký University, in collaboration with VSB-Technical University of Ostrava and Saarland University in Germany, developed a new anode for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) based on a graphene acid (GA)—a densely carboxylated graphene derivative.

The prize, which is intended for students and young scientists, was founded in 1994 by the eminent Czech mathematician Prof. Ivo Babuška. Our colleague from IT4Innovations Jakub Homola also scored points in the 2021 edition of the competition. The expert jury awarded his diploma thesis, in which he used Ostrava supercomputers.

The first pan-European study programme focused purely on High- Performance Computing (HPC) is being established in Europe. IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, which is part of VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, is also a member of the consortium that will offer its courses to students from autumn 2022. Future students will find excellent career opportunities in rapidly expanding fields such as HPC, High-Performance Data Analysis (HPDA), and Artificial Intelligence.

In the past, allocated resources were requested, granted, and accounted in normalized core hours (NCH). NCH used a factor different for each cluster and type of nodes.  

With progressing time, the system of NCH has become obsolete, since we now have clusters that greatly vary in computing capacity, i.e. CPU, GPU, memory, and determining the value of the resources of different clusters is a complex process that cannot be based on a single value.