IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center
IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB – Technical University of Ostrava is a leading research, development, and innovation centre active in the fields of High-Performance Computing (HPC), Data Analysis (HPDA), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and their application to other scientific fields, industry, and society. IT4Innovations operates the most powerful supercomputing systems in the Czech Republic, which are provided to Czech and foreign research teams from both academia and industry. Together with the CESNET and CERIT-SC institutions, IT4Innovations constitutes e-INFRA CZ, a strategic research infrastructure of the Czech Republic.
Since 2013, IT4Innovations has been providing state-of-the-art supercomputing technologies and services to both Czech and foreign research teams from both academia and the private sector to increase the competitiveness and innovativeness of Czech science and industry. At present, IT4Innovations runs three supercomputers: Karolina (15.7 PFlop/s, installed in the summer of 2021), Barbora (849 TFlop/s, installed in the autumn of 2019), and the specialised NVIDIA DGX-2 system for artificial intelligence computation, (130 TFlop/s and 2 PFlop/s in AI, installed in the spring of 2019). The Karolina supercomputer, acquired as part of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, was the most powerful in the Czech Republic on the year of its installation, 69th in the world (on the TOP500 list), and ranked 8th in the Green500 ranking of the most energy-efficient supercomputers. The first supercomputers installed at IT4Innovations were Anselm (94 TFlop/s, installed in the summer of 2013) and Salomon (2 PFlop/s, installed in the summer of 2015), which were decommissioned in 2021.
The key research areas of IT4Innovations include big data processing and analysis, machine learning, development of parallel scalable algorithms, solution of computationally demanding engineering problems, advanced visualization, virtual reality, modelling for nanotechnologies, and material design. Moreover, IT4Innovations has strong international links and as such it actively participates in several prestigious international organizations (PRACE, ETP4HPC, EuroHPC, I4MS, BDVA, EUDAT CDI, HiPEAC, and Eurolab4HPC) and more than a dozen of international projects funded primarily by the Horizon 2020 program.
IT4Innovations research activities are executed across 5 laboratories:
- Advanced Data Analysis and Simulations Lab,
- Infrastructure Research Lab,
- Parallel Algorithms Research Lab,
- Modelling for Nanotechnologies Lab,
- Big Data Analysis Lab.
IT4Innovations also has a strong focus on cooperation with industrial enterprises, earning IT4Innovation the status of the Digital Innovation Hub registered at the European Commission level and is a member of DIHnet EU, the European network of digital innovation hubs. In this context, IT4Innovations has developed a partnership with the Moravian-Silesian Innovation Centre Ostrava and in 2020 the Digital Innovation Hub Ostrava has been established.
Furthermore, IT4Innovations is also involved in a whole range of educational activities focused on HPC, HPDA, and AI. Moreover, IT4Innovations employees participate as educating experts on HPC, HPDA, and AI within the Computational Science PhD study program. This program is jointly guaranteed by IT4Innovations and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at VSB-TUO. In addition, the centre's employees participate in ensuring education in computationally-based study programs offered by VSB-TUO on all levels ranging from Bc to PhD study programs such as applied mechanics, computational and applied mathematics, nanotechnology, and applied physics.
