PRESS RELEASES

Ostrava, October 14, 2020 – In early October, a contract to acquire the most powerful supercomputer in the Czech Republic, which will also rank among the most powerful in Europe, was signed.  The contract was signed between the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which will deliver the system, and IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center VSB at Technical University of Ostrava, where the new supercomputer will be located. The supercomputer will serve both academia and industry.

IT4Innovations has joined the EuroCC project, the objective of which is to establish the National Competence Center in high-performance computing (HPC) and implement supporting activities in this field focused on industry, public administration, and academia. The project is aimed not only at sharing knowledge and expertise in HPC across Europe but also to reinforce the technological independence and competitiveness of the EU.

IT4Innovations National Supercomputer Center presents an updated viaRODOS application, which was developed within the RODOS project and which cooperates with the Floreon+ system. The application uses data sources provided by the National Traffic Information Center (NDIC), which falls under the Directorate of Roads and Motorways (DRM) of the Czech Republic. Users thus receive the most up-to-date data on traffic on roads and in selected cities in the Czech Republic.

High-performance computers in the Czech Republic are again serving a good cause. IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center has started cooperation with the Italian university Politecnico di Milano and offered a hand in the research connected with the most discussed disease of this time – COVID-19.

MathInHPC Doctoral School offers students a wide portfolio of study and research related activities of Czech universities as well as the Czech Academy of Sciences, an opportunity to participate in internships at universities and research institutions, and access to the state-of-the-art HPC (High Performance Computing) technologies operated by IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center.

IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB – Technical University of Ostrava has offered its users from academic institutions priority access to its computational resources to solve problems regarding COVID-19 disease research.

Digitalisation is increasingly regarded as one of the keys to ensure the future competitiveness of enterprises, including small and medium-sized ones. IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, a research institute of VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, together with the Moravian-Silesian Innovation Centre Ostrava have therefore decided to share their know-how through the setting up of the Digital Innovation Hub Ostrava. The Hub will help companies primarily based in the Moravian-Silesian Region to identify, and potentially even meet their needs in the field of digitalisation.

After eight months of work, the LEXIS Project started the first of four planned Face to Face Meetings
which is under way in Turin from 10th to 12th September 2019, hosted by the LINKS Foundation in the Politecnico di Torino Campus.

In Ostrava, on Wednesday the 2nd of October 2019, the ceremony for the new supercomputer being put into operation at IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB - Technical University of Ostrava was held. It has expanded the family of supercomputers installed at the centre. The winning name of the competition was Barbora.

Today marks the launch of a pilot project, OPENQKD, that will install a test quantum communication infrastructure in several European countries. It will boost the security of critical applications in the fields of telecommunications, health care, electricity supply and government services.

The CESNET Association, Masaryk University and VSB – Technical University of Ostrava have applied for a joint project for establishing an upgraded national research e-infrastructure e-INFRA CZ. The project application was preceded by signing a partnership agreement, which commits all three institutions to mutual cooperate on operating, developing and providing a comprehensive portfolio of services under the infrastructure.

The transnational InnoHPC project is in its closing phase. Bringing together 15 partners from the Danube region, it is supported by the Interreg Danube Transnational Programme. On 24th and 25th June 2019, the final conference dedicated to the project will be held in the city of Timisoara in Romania.

The IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, located at the VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, succeeded in a pan-European competition for hosting the “EuroHPC petascale system”, to be acquired within the implementation of EuroHPC Join Technology Initiative. The results of the call for hosting and co-funding of the HPC system were announced on the occasion of the 7th EuroHPC Joint Undertaking Government Board Meeting.

IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center organized the 4th High Performance Computing in Science and Engineering (HPCSE) conference at Hotel Soláň in the Beskydy Mountains on 20th to 23rd May 2019. Nearly 100 experts and students from different parts of the world had the opportunity to exchange experience in the field of HPC technologies and other scientific domains that use these technologies or benefit from them.

CloudiFacturing launched a new Second Open Call for its project. The goal is to draw your attention to the upcoming Call / Request for Proposals to initiate the creative process of generating ideas for Application Experiments. These Application Experiments are dedicated sub-projects with one year duration that are executed within the scope of CloudiFacturing.

With its kick-off meeting in January in Ostrava, the LEXIS (Large-scale Execution for Industry & Society) project has now been officially launched. 16 partners from all over Europe gathered here and joined forces to set up all activities to be completed during the project. LEXIS brings together a consortium with the skills and experience to deliver a complex multi-faceted project, spanning a range of complex technologies across seven European countries.

At the end of March 2019, the IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center became a member of the Big Data Value Association, joining other major industrial companies and prestigious scientific organizations.

IIT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB – Technical University of Ostrava introduced its installation of the NVIDIA DGX-2™ computing system today. The system is designed to tackle the most challenging artificial intelligence tasks, delivering over 2 petaFLOPs of performance for AI researchers. The ceremony was attended by the Governor of the Moravian-Silesian Region, Ivo Vondrák, Mayor of the City of Ostrava, Tomáš Macura, and the Rector of VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, Václav Snášel.

15 Ph.D. students from all over the world are embarking on 15 parallel and complementary research projects with the ambitious goal of defining a virtual testing system for turbomachinery, simulating the entire machine and not single components as is usually done. This is the objective of the EU project EXPERTISE – models, EXperiments and high PERformance computing for Turbine mechanical Integrity and Structural dynamics in Europe, coordinated in the Czech Republic by professor Tomáš Kozubek from IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, involving a research consortium of 11 beneficiaries and 9 partner organizations from 8 countries.

IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center has run the supercomputer Anselm since 2013, and almost all of its computing capacity is available to Czech and foreign scientists through open grant competitions. During its five years of operation, Anselm has served 441 users, helping them to solve 414 research projects. It has been involved in solving problems in many areas of research and development, such as new drug designs, understanding of high intensity laser acceleration, hydrological modelling and flood prediction, enzymatic reactions analysis, and many others.