NEWS

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.

Once the 40th most powerful supercomputer in the world computed its last computational task on Monday, 13th December. Six years after its commissioning, the era of the second supercomputer in Ostrava - the Salomon supercomputer - has come to an end.

Thousands of high-performance computing professionals met again at the international Supercomputing Conference SC21, which took place from 14th to 19th November in St. Louis, USA. IT4Innovations was also among the exhibitors at this supercomputing event.

Ostrava, 15th November 2021 – The 58th edition of the TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers was announced today in St. Louis, USA.  Karolina, the most powerful Czech supercomputer, located at IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, was ranked 8th worldwide and 3rd among European supercomputers in terms of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world.

Until now, observing subatomic structures was beyond the resolution capabilities of direct imaging methods, and this seemed unlikely to change. Czech scientists, however, have presented a method with which they became the first in the world to observe an inhomogeneous electron charge distribution around a halogen atom, thus confirming the existence of a phenomenon that had been theoretically predicted but never directly observed. Comparable to the first observation of a black hole, the breakthrough will facilitate understanding of interactions between individual atoms or molecules as well as of chemical reactions, and it opens a path to refinement of the material and structural properties of various physical, biological, and chemical systems. The breakthrough was published in Science.

Thirty scientists from two research institutes met on Thursday, 4th November, at IT4Innovations in Ostrava to present their research activities to each other and discuss the possibilities of mutual cooperation. The introductory workshop aimed to find synergies in the areas of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence.

A reliable, fast, cheap, and easy-to-use diagnostic method for assessing the quality of beef meat was developed by scientists from the Czech Advanced Technology and Research Institute, CATRIN, of Palacký University in collaboration with colleagues from IT4Innovations, Spain and Brazil. By the method of electrochemical detection alongside using 2D graphene acid prepared in Olomouc, they can detect even small residues of pork meat in beef products. This is important when residues of pork are extremely undesirable for religious, cultural, but also health reasons. The results were published by the renowned journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.

The last day of September was a great day for budding computer scientists. This year's Joseph Fourier Awards recognized the work of four young researchers, including our IT4Innovations colleague Martin Golasowski.

As in the previous years, this year our supercomputing centre took part in the Researcher's Night. The evening event, during which hundreds of scientific departments open their doors, took place on Friday 24th September. The main theme of this year's event was TIME. That is to say, a variable we have a lot to say about at IT4Innovations.