In mid-November, the doors of Supercomputing Conference 25 (SC25) opened in St. Louis. The AI boom, the rise of quantum technologies and 16,500 participants turned the America’s Center Convention Complex into a place where the changing future of computing could be seen in real time. And it was precisely within this global flow that IT4Innovations demonstrated that a Czech supercomputing centre plays a role that is visible on the world stage.

Europe is gaining strength

SC25 introduced new TOP500 and Green500 rankings – and with them, a significant milestone for European supercomputing. The EuroHPC JU celebrated a historic milestone: JUPITER became the first European exascale supercomputer and, at the same time, the fourth most powerful system in the world. It is also a record holder for energy efficiency and a model for sustainable supercomputing.

 

LUMI, whose consortium includes IT4Innovations, retained 9th place in the TOP500. Its successor, LUMI-AI, together with the LUMI-IQ quantum platform, clearly illustrates the direction of European research: HPC, AI, and quantum technologies.

LUMI-AI will be part of the LUMI AI Factory – the largest of the EuroHPC JU AI factories, of which IT4Innovations is also a member. (Note: the LUMI AI Factory began operations using the computing power of the existing LUMI supercomputer.)

Europe has thus confirmed its position among the global elite – with JUPITER in 4th place, LUMI in 9th, Leonardo in 10th, and further systems, including the Czech Karolina.

IT4Innovations at the SC25 exhibition

At booth 4604, visitors to the IT4Innovations booth saw the key elements of the Czech national e-infrastructure e-INFRA CZ, including: the first Czech quantum computer VLQ (inaugurated in September 2025), the Karolina supercomputer, European projects such as LUMI and the Czech AI Factories, the Czech Republic’s involvement in the EuroHPC JU ecosystem, and activities in HPC, HPDA, QC and AI technologies. The booth was further enlivened by competitions provided by the MaX Centre of Excellence and the EXA4MIND project.

    

Czech research

Within the Technical Programme, Jakub Homola presented results in accelerating the assembly of Schur complement matrices on GPUs within the domain decomposition method, which:

  • speed up a GPU-running part of the code by up to 5×,
  • accelerate the assembly process by more than 3×,
  • make the solution of complex engineering problems on modern supercomputers more efficient.

  

Jan Martinovič, Kateřina Slaninová, and Pavlína Smolková presented a poster on the ACE library for scalable asynchronous task processing on supercomputers. The library accelerates the computation of alternative routes within workflows of distributed traffic simulations and offers:

  • up to a 15× speed-up for the City of Prague scenario,
  • a 1.45× improvement for the entire Central Bohemian Region,
  • a scalable approach ideal for HPC environments.

This research was carried out with the support of the EPICURE project and through e-INFRA CZ.

Another poster by Kateřina Slaninová and Pavlína Smolková focused on visualising the European Open Web Index from the OpenWebSearch.eu project. Experiments ran on the Karolina supercomputer and addressed challenges associated with visualising networks ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of nodes.

   

Karina Pešatová co-organised two Birds of a Feather sessions:

  • Building Sustainable HPC Outreach – where she presented outreach materials created with the support of the Superhrdinové vědy project 
  • Super(computing)heroes – a meeting of women in HPC across academia, industry, and centres, including representatives from Microsoft, AMD, and others.

 

IT4Innovations among global leaders in hybrid quantum computing

One of the key announcements of SC25 came from NVIDIA: more than a dozen leading supercomputing centres worldwide are beginning to use NVQLink to connect GPUs with quantum processors.

And among them – IT4Innovations.

This places IT4Innovations alongside institutions such as MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory, which are integrating NVQLink for the most advanced research. The Czech quantum ecosystem is thus entering the international top league.

The atmosphere of SC25: the year when AI completely took over

This year in St. Louis, several trends were evident:

  • AI dominated everything – from new systems and presentations to strategic directions.
  • The exhibition was flooded with companies focused on cooling, energy, and infrastructure, which many described as “the largest showcase of supercomputing plumbing in history”.
  • SCinet set a new record with a throughput of 13.72 TB/s, which Doug Eadline of HPCwire likened to a whole lot of Netflix streams combined.
  • Jensen Huang attended the opening of the exhibition and highlighted the jump of GPU systems in the TOP500 from 10% to 90%.
     

Proč byla konference SC25 důležitá pro české HPC?

This year we:

  • confirmed Karolina’s position among the European top tier,

  • introduced the VLQ quantum computer to the world,

  • showcased the outstanding results of Czech research,

  • and strengthened our role in European projects, including AI Factories.