PRESS RELEASES

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

The e-INFRA CZ consortium has achieved the highest possible score in the international evaluation of large research infrastructures in the Czech Republic, which took place under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic. The consortium consists of three independent infrastructures: CESNET, IT4Innovations and CERIT-SC. The evaluation highlighted, among other things, the progress made in merging these infrastructures and the resulting benefit of a unified access to services for users.

Karolina, the latest Czech supercomputer, located at IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center in Ostrava, has reached the 15th place in the Green500 list, which evaluates the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world.

The e-INFRA CZ consortium has implemented quantum key distribution, which has reached primacy in many ways. Communication secured by encryption through quantum key distribution (QKD) represents a new shift in the field of communication security and addresses the risks associated with the advent of quantum computers, which brings with it the real danger of existing encryption methods being cracked more easily. This is the first national as well as international inter-city distribution of quantum keys in the Czech Republic, specifically to Cieszyn, Poland. The implementation of the distribution is the result of cooperation between CESNET and IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB - Technical University of Ostrava and the Polish PSNC academic network. 

There is no doubt that artificial intelligence is becoming part of everyday life. Newly, it could also help in life-threatening events. Czech scientists, including those from IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, are developing a voicebot that should be activated when emergency lines are extremely overloaded.

IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center has joined the LIGATE project, which will use European supercomputing systems to improve computer-aided drug design. Ostrava's supercomputers will thus contribute their computing power, in rapid response to the global pandemic crisis.

The Karolina supercomputer located at IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center has ranked 69th in the TOP500 list of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. With its two computing parts, Karolina has scored twice in the TOP500 list, namely 69th and 149th. In Europe it ranked 19th and in the Czech Republic it confirmed its dominant position as the most powerful Czech supercomputer.

In March, a large-scale vaccination centre in Ostrava's Černá louka area became operational. Vaccination according to a simulation prepared by scientists at IT4Innovations can be administered to up to 2,600 people per day. Today's capacity is around 1,000 people, depending on the number of vaccines being delivered.

IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center conducts excellent research via national and international projects.  Quite unique is the success rate in being involved in projects in the European Union's Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, where IT4Innovations currently features in 16 international projects, in one of which as the coordinator.

The technology of Low-Power WAN (LPWAN) IoT infrastructure with an innovative approach to detecting selected security incidents was transferred to Inotecha, Ltd in Lithuania within the SPLWAN-LT mini-project consisting of a consortium of two partners (academia and industry).

It has been more than seven years since the very first supercomputer was launched at IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center in Ostrava. The Anselm supercomputer, from the company Atos, was launched in 2013 and has since then had its computational resources available for Czech and foreign scientists. During its operation, more than 2.6 million computing jobs were run on it in 725 research projects in fields such as material sciences, computational chemistry, biosciences, and engineering. At the end of January, its operation permanently ceased. However, it will find another application as part of the World of Civilization exhibition in Dolní/Lower Vítkovice.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade has announced the winner of the national call for European Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIH), which, together with European partners, will support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and public administration institutions in the wider integration of digital technologies into manufacturing, commerce, and public services. The Digital Innovation Hub Ostrava (DIH Ostrava) is one of the winners.

IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center has officially started cooperation in the international EVEREST project. The project aims at developing a holistic approach for co-designing computation and communication in a cutting-edge and primarily secure system for high-performance data analysis (HPDA). This approach will be tested using a weather analysis-based prediction model for the renewable energy trading market, an application for air-quality monitoring of industrial sites, and a real-time traffic modelling framework for intelligent transportation in Smart Cities.

In the final quarter of last year there was a competition to name the most powerful supercomputer in the Czech Republic, which will be installed at IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center in Ostrava this year. From more than 5,000 submissions sent by over 2,000 people, the name KAROLINA was selected by the jury.

Ostrava, 27th October 2020 – Today, most of us in the Czech Republic own a mobile phone, and there are even more functional SIM cards than residents. Therefore, it is the operational data of mobile operators that is being used at IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB –Technical University of Ostrava to deal with crisis situations. The data is processed in anonymised form and provide information on population movements during the coronavirus pandemic. The results are made available to the public in the Mobility Atlas with day-to-day level of detail in all regions and cities above 50,000 inhabitants.