Six Czech companies compete for a EUR 300,000 supercomputing grant in the European FFplus call

Six Czech companies have entered the competition to receive a grant of up to EUR 300,000 to use supercomputers to solve their business challenges. They can implement their projects using the most powerful supercomputers in Europe, including Ostrava’s Karolina. The evaluation of the submitted projects is currently underway. Those selected by the committee will be implemented from January 2025.

The European FFplus call offers two unique opportunities for SMEs and start-ups. The first one, called Business Experiments, is for enterprises with no previous experience with supercomputing that decide to use supercomputers to solve their specific practical problems. A total of 4 Czech companies have applied for the first round of this part of the call and are also the principal investigators of the submitted projects.

The second part of the FFplus call, called Innovations studies, is for enterprises and start-ups that want to use supercomputers to develop and advance applications and projects in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector. Two Czech companies that are part of internationally submitted projects and act as partners have applied for this call.

“The involvement of Czech companies in the first phase of the FFplus call is a successful outcome. I believe that there will be even more interest in the next rounds. Businesses in the Czech Republic are continuously interested in using supercomputers in practice,” said Tomáš Karásek, Head of the National Competence Centre in HPC (NCC).

A two-phase evaluation by more than 60 experts and ten moderators is currently underway. Each project is evaluated by two independent evaluators who are mentored by a moderator. “We expect that the list of successful projects that will receive grant funding will be published by the end of this year,” said Kateřina Beranová, Communications Specialist at the NCC.

By 2028, the FFplus project will have distributed a total of EUR 8 million among companies. The next round of the call will open to companies in the early summer of 2025. The NCC assists companies with the project preparation and application process. If they use the computational resources of the Ostrava supercomputers, they will cooperate with experts from IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center to implement the project.

For more information about the FFplus project, see the NCC website.

The current FFplus call is the fourth phase of a continuous project that has been running since 2013. Its main objective is to help enterprises overcome the barriers associated with using supercomputers in practice and thus strengthen the global competitiveness of the European industry. Over the years, nearly 200 companies from across Europe have implemented projects to harness the computing power of supercomputers in practice.

Media Contact

Kateřina Beranová, Communication Specialist at National Competence Centre in HPC

katerina.beranova@vsb.cz

tel.: +420 770 641 223

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Konference uživatelů IT4Innovations - přístupy k superpočítačům EuroHPC JU

At the Users’ Conference of IT4I, we presented ways to access the most powerful supercomputers in Europe

At the beginning of November, IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center held a conference for its current and future supercomputing users. During the programme, we introduced the participants to Europe’s most powerful supercomputer network and how to access it. This network also includes the Karolina supercomputer in Ostrava, operated by IT4Innovations.

Interested participants thus received the most up-to-date information on computing systems and planned innovations presented by the pan-European EuroHPC Joint Undertaking at the user conference held in Amsterdam in October.

However, we mainly presented key details about the five types of EuroHPC JU calls through which it is possible to apply for computational resources of European supercomputers. We also provided an overview of the evaluation process concerning the submitted project applications and the closure dates of each call.

View our full presentation

The Users’ Conference of IT4Innovations attracted almost 80 participants, who took part in 22 expert lectures and subsequent discussions. Major topics included advances in machine learning, quantum chemistry, molecular dynamics, and materials engineering. These talks demonstrated the practical results and benefits that the use of supercomputers brings across a variety of scientific domains. For more information, visit the IT4Innovations website.

 

5 types of calls for companies, researchers, and public institutions to obtain computational resources

The EuroHPC JU grant competitions are divided into five categories according to the purpose of use and the required amount of computational resources of supercomputers. The following calls are currently available:

  • Benchmark Access — It allows application developers and researchers to test and benchmark their applications. Users receive a limited number of node hours prior to applying for other calls.
  • Development Access — This is designated for application developers and researchers who require a small number of node hours to develop, test, and optimise their applications.
  • AI and Data-Intensive Applications Access — It is open mainly to small and medium-sized enterprises, startups, and public sector entities, who require access to supercomputing resources to perform artificial intelligence (AI) and data-intensive tasks.
  • Regular Access — It is designated for users from private and public sectors whose projects require large-scale resources or frequent access to significant computational resources and data repositories.
  • Extreme-Scale Access — It is designated for high-impact and high societal gain innovative research applications requiring large amount of computational resources, data repositories, and support.

 

For more about the EuroHPC JU calls, see here.

Read also about funding opportunities for supercomputing projects.

 

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AI Days in Ostrava featuring AI 4 Business: Using AI Technology in Practice

Our participation in the AI 4 Business — Using AI Technology in Practice event, organised by the Moravian-Silesian Innovation Centre (MSIC) as part of the national AI Days festival, gave us a unique opportunity to introduce companies and startups to the benefits supercomputers offer in AI development.

During the event’s networking sessions, we, the National Competence Centre in HPC, presented specific tools and services that can help innovative companies significantly streamline their research and development of AI projects and applications.

Indeed, supercomputers today play a key role in analysing large volumes of data, training complex machine learning models, and developing advanced AI solutions, which can be critical for companies in a competitive environment.

By accessing supercomputers, they can reduce the time needed to process large volumes of data, speed up model testing, and get faster results. Plus, with our services, they can get expert support and know-how in code and workflow optimisation.

Finally, we introduced the FFplus initiative, thanks to which companies and startups active in artificial intelligence can receive up to EUR 300,000 to develop their own AI projects using supercomputers. Find out more about it here.

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EuroHPC User Day 2024: Gathering of the European Supercomputing Community

At the end of October, the second edition of the EuroHPC User Day was held in Amsterdam. The meeting attracted nearly 200 participants, mainly active users of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking supercomputers. There were also representatives of supercomputer operators and downstream service providers, including the representatives of the Czech National Competence Centre in HPC.

The program included presentations of completed and upcoming supercomputing and quantum infrastructure installations. Furthermore, selected users presented their projects and shared best practices in their implementation using European supercomputers. The meeting also offered a space for consultation and networking with users of the operators of individual supercomputers operated under the EuroHPC JU. Interested participants also had the opportunity to learn about the Czech Karolina supercomputer, the planned quantum computer of the LUMI-Q consortium and the services of IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center.

An interesting part of the programme was the presentation of the current EuroHPC JU grant competitions for obtaining computational resources. These challenges are open not only for academics but also for companies and startups.

For those interested in the practical use of supercomputers, we offer expert consultations and help navigating through the most up-to-date access options. Do not hesitate to contact us.

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