Ostrava, 9 January 2025 – Over the next two years, the supercomputers Barbora and Karolina at the IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center will be replaced. Like all electronic devices, they become outdated, and after roughly five to six years of operation, they need to be upgraded. This will also happen with the Barbora supercomputer, which is in operation since 2019. A new system will be installed in Ostrava in 2025, supplied by the company Eviden.

IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, part of the VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, has operated the most powerful Czech supercomputers since 2013. The centre's computational resources are primarily utilised by the Czech research community, which relies on these state-of-the-art machines to conduct its research. This year, not only researchers but also commercial sector users will welcome the successor to the retiring Barbora supercomputer. The new supercomputer will cost CZK 91 million and will be funded through the Operational programme Johannes Amos Comenius, managed by the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports of the Czech Republic.

“This system is not being acquired primarily to expand the capacity of our centre – that will occur with the planned upgrade of the Karolina supercomputer in 2026. However, the successor to Barbora, featuring Intel Granite Rapids processors, the latest in processor technology, will allow our users to significantly accelerate the solving of selected memory-bound tasks. I am confident that a portion of our user base will find this architecture indispensable for their scientific endeavours,” said Branislav Jansík, Director of Supercomputing Services at IT4Innovations.

The new supercomputer will be supplied by Eviden (formerly Atos), the same company that provided the retiring Barbora system. Commenting on the delivery, Jaroslav Vojtěch, Head of the HPC team at Eviden, said: “We are delighted to continue our excellent collaboration with IT4Innovations, which began with the delivery of the first supercomputer, Anselm, in 2013. This will be the third supercomputer we deliver to Ostrava, and it will feature some entirely new technologies being installed in Europe for the very first time.”

The new supercomputer, built on BullSequana XH3000 technology, will offer users a unique architecture consisting of compute nodes designed specifically for memory-intensive tasks and higher memory-per-core requirements. Compared to the compute nodes of the Karolina supercomputer, it will deliver up to 2.75x higher memory bandwidth (8800 MT/s memory speed) and three times the memory size. It will benefit users working on engineering tasks (e.g., fluid dynamics – CFD), molecular dynamics, astrophysics, or climate modelling. To complement this, the system will offer users high-speed storage based entirely on solid state drive (SSD) technology, enabling efficient operation during long computations using the checkpoint-restart method with a speed of more than 697 GB/s and a capacity of more than 500 TB.

 

Co-financed by the European Union within the project "Modernization of e-INFRA CZ II", project registration number: CZ.02.01.01/00/23_016/0008329, Johannes Amos Comenius Programme.