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A quality portfolio of services and market monitoring are crucial aspects of the National Competence Centres’ cooperation with the industry

This was one of the outcomes of the half-day workshop of the National Competence Centres in HPC (NCC), which was held on 12th June and immediately preceded the 9th annual Austrian-Slovenian HPC Meeting.

What else was discussed at the meeting, including representatives from the Czech Republic? The discussion on key topics such as deepening cooperation with small and medium-sized enterprises and creating and effectively presenting a portfolio of services was supported by model presentations of success stories examples. These confirmed, among other things, the need for mutual synergy of individual NCCs as well as the importance of their cooperation within other projects (e.g., European Digital Innovation Hubs) and cooperation with industrial companies.

NEWS_ASHPC

This time, once again, we were part of the Austrian-Slovenian HPC Meeting

The 9th Austrian-Slovenian HPC Meeting (ASHPC 2023) was held in Maribor, Slovenia, on 13–15 June. The programme also included a presentation titled “NCC Czech Republic, Entrance to the World of HPC” by Tomáš Karásek, the Czech NCC Coordinator.

The three-day event brought several exciting contributions. National institutions and scientific clusters presented their latest work, and news from the world of exascale and cloud computing was also discussed. Subsequently resonating in the discussions, one central topic was quantum computing, its potential, development, and integration into the high-performance computing environment. The conference also featured a poster session.

The ASHPC Meeting traces its roots back to 2015. The original modest event focused exclusively on HPC issues in Austria, with an overlap to the German-speaking countries, has grown over time, and the last three editions are now fully dedicated to current topics in the Central European region and the Balkan countries. For a change, the Jubilee 10th edition will be held in Austria next year.

VV4

The secret of supercomputers was unlocked at the Science Fair in Prague!

The most significant science popularisation event in the Czech Republic, the Science Fair, has already passed. This year’s seventh edition, traditionally held at the PVO EXPO Praha exhibition centre in Letňany in Prague (8th – 10th June), broke not only records in the number of visitors. Indeed, we couldn’t miss out on it.

Throughout the event, there was great interest in visiting our booth, Unlock the Secrets of Supercomputers. What is a supercomputer? What does it consist of? What can be calculated on it? What is its main advantage? These are just some of the visitors’ inquisitive questions during the three days. They also took part in a virtual reality experience, in which they moved to our data room, and many had a spin on the wheel of fortune, where knowledge and attention also played an important role. Finally, an easy supercomputer quiz with Harry Potter was a huge success among the children.

So, what was the deal with the records? The first one was broken at the very beginning of the event, with 100 exhibitors registering. Another record was broken when the organisers counted 46,000 visitors, 11,000 more than last year. This year’s Science Fair was indeed worth it!

The Science Fair is the most significant science popularisation and educational event in the Czech Republic, organised by the Czech Academy of Sciences since 2015. This year it was held for the seventh time (two editions were cancelled due to the Covid pandemic)

Novinky_veletrh_vedy

Unlock the secrets of supercomputers at the Science Fair in Prague

The most significant scientific popularisation event in the Czech Republic, the Science Fair, is coming soon! Take a trip, bring your kids, and immerse yourself in the secrets of science and supercomputers. The event will be held at the VPVA EXPO PRAHA exhibition centre in Letňany in Prague from 8th to 10th June.

What have we prepared for you this year? At booth No. 79, headlined “Unlock the secrets of supercomputers“, you will learn everything you want about supercomputers. You can look forward not only to fascinating facts from the world of supercomputers but also to competitions, quizzes, and puzzles to win great prizes. There will be something for everyone.

The Science Fair is the most significant science popularisation event in the Czech Republic, organised by the Czech Academy of Sciences since 2015. This year is the event’s seventh edition (two editions were cancelled due to the COVID pandemic). Last year, the event was attended by record 35,000 visitors.

Novinky_ISC_2023

National Competence Centre in HPC part of ISC 2023

Europe’s most important event in high-performance computing, ISC 2023, is already over. The National Competence Centre in HPC (NCC) presented its achievements so far, including successful collaborations with companies and other stakeholders in the field, and introduced the conference participants to current opportunities for collaboration with industry, public administration, and academia.

Lectures, panel discussions, as well as a section for exhibitors, which featured a total of 147 this year. This was ISC 2023, an event with its origins dating back to 1986. It took place in Hamburg, Germany, on 21-25th May and was attended by a total of 3,100 visitors.

Traditionally, the TOP500 list of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers was updated at this year’s conference. The first place was taken by the Frontier supercomputer, the second place belonged to the Fugaku supercomputer, and the third place was taken by the LUMI supercomputer, which maintained its position as the European number one and world number three for the third time in a row. It should be noted that thanks to IT4Innovations’ membership in the LUMI consortium, Czech scientists will also have access to this supercomputer.

Akce_budoucnost

The future of National Competence Centres lies in intensive cooperation with the industry

Lectures, panel discussions, and project presentations. Over five hundred representatives from the field of HPC attended the EuroHPC Summit in Göteborg, Sweden (20-23 March). On the last day of the event, a workshop of Centres of Excellence and National Competence Centres (NCCs) was held, where the coordinator of the Czech NCC, Tomáš Karásek from IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, was also present.

In addition to presentations of selected centres, success stories were also discussed (see examples of NCC Czech Republic here). Discussions included, among others, the need for more intensive cooperation with partners from the industry, raising awareness of the services of competence centres, and issues affecting high-performance computing. One of the crucial topics for the future that was discussed was the improvement of accessibility for users and the consequent need for better clarity and communication of available services. The need to address the reduction of energy consumption in the operation of the centres was also mentioned.

The EuroHPC Summit is one of the most important conferences in the field of high-performance computing. It has been held annually since 2016, and this year, for the first time, the main organiser was the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU).

A photo gallery from the meeting can be found HERE.

Akce_prumyslove_firmy

Industrial companies and public administration have another opportunity to take full advantage of HPC

The National Competence Centre for HPC celebrates two years of existence in the Czech Republic. During this time, it has helped many companies and public institutions by providing access to supercomputers, technology consulting, and free educational activities. It intends to build on its earlier achievements in the next three-year period of its operation.

Leveraging the power of high-performance computing can be a potent avenue for future growth for many companies and institutions, Recent years have proven very challenging, with companies having to deal with fundamental problems that include profound societal changes, the coronavirus pandemic and its related restrictions, the dramatic increase in the prices of materials and energy, and changes in customer-supplier relationships. Many companies are dealing both with the need to innovate production processes and the creation of the products themselves, and the financial complexity of the implementation itself; a secondary difficulty is the lack of qualified human resources. National HPC Competence Centres funded by the EuroHPC joint European venture, more than thirty of which have sprung up in Europe over the past two years, can be of considerable value in this context.

In the Czech Republic, the role of the National Competence Centre for HPC (NCC) is played by the IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB – Technical University of Ostrava. “Our goal is primarily to offer a wide portfolio of services in the field of HPC, as well as to promote cooperation at a pan-European level, to strengthen Czech companies’ technological independence and competitiveness,” explained Tomáš Karásek, who manages the NCC in the Czech Republic. In practice, adopting high-performance computing can result in financial and time savings for many companies and institutions when tackling specific tasks. “Every year, we prepare more than a dozen courses that we offer free of charge to interested companies, public institutions, and academia” added Tomáš Karásek.

In addition to consulting services, designing and implementing pilot HPC solutions, and migrating existing ones, end users can use services that include information sharing and, last but not least, the possibility of professional training.

The fact that there is much to build on from the previous period is demonstrated by several use cases implemented by the Czech National Competence Centre for HPC. These include cooperation with the Police of the Czech Republic (development of a tool for more effective crime fighting), processing of medical images as a service for University Hospital Ostrava, launching a vaccination centre in Ostrava, processing and storage of data for the European Space Agency, and many other projects for industrial companies and public institutions.

Novinky_AI

Workshop AI and Simulation-based Engineering Workshop was received with great enthusiasm

At the beginning of December, we organised the AI and simulation-based engineering workshop, which took place at the Grandior Hotel in Prague. Our invitation accepted experts from leading European research institutions who presented talks about artificial intelligence and simulations in engineering.

The importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in scientific and industrial sectors has grown significantly over the last decade – modern progress in AI research is already visible in all kinds of engineering and medical applications. One important field of research is the integration of AI technologies into computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods; AI can be used to analyze large amounts of CFD data, accelerate simulations, and replace conventional CFD models. However, due to the immense size of CFD data required for training sufficiently accurate AI models, the use of high-performance computing (HPC) systems has become a necessity.

In the European project EuroCC, National Competence Centres (NCCs) that provide access to HPC and AI knowledge as well as to resources have been established or identified in over 30 European countries. They act as a gateway for academia and industry to problem-related experts and projects. The European Centre of Excellence in Exascale Computing “Research on AI- and Simulation-Based Engineering at Exascale” (CoE RAISE) brings AI and next-generation HPC architectures together by optimizing and developing methods for representative large-scale applications.

Experts of CoE RAISE and the NCCs of the Czech Republic, Iceland, and Germany presented their progress in AI-related research at the “AI- and simulation-based engineering workshop”, which took place in the Grandior Hotel in Prague on the first of December 2022. After an introduction to the projects, overarching and cross-sectional AI- and HPC technologies were presented. This included talks on recent instances of optimization of machine learning methods and the usage of new disruptive technologies such as quantum-based computers. The session was followed by a parallel session on compute- and data-driven cases spanning many fields of application from aerospace, combustion, and energy harvesting to fundamental physics, additive manufacturing, and remote sensing and seismic imaging, to name just a few. The workshop closed with a second parallel session presenting important activities of the NCCs related to novel AI software and hardware technologies that are offered to industry and academia.

Researchers from various supercomputing centers, universities, and companies showed great interest in this workshop, and the high quality of the presentations led to lively discussions and opened collaboration opportunities. These discussions continued during the social event after the workshop, where the attendees exchanged their experiences and discussed their current AI-related challenges with the experts of CoE RAISE and the NCCs. This fruitful workshop demonstrated the importance of knowledge exchange between scientific and industrial sectors. The importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in scientific and industrial sectors has grown significantly over the last decade – modern progress in AI research is already visible in all kinds of engineering and medical applications. One important field of research is the integration of AI technologies into computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods; AI can be used to analyze large amounts of CFD data, accelerate simulations, and replace conventional CFD models. However, due to the immense size of CFD data required for training sufficiently accurate AI models, the use of high-performance computing (HPC) systems has become a necessity.

In the European project EuroCC, National Competence Centres (NCCs) that provide access to HPC and AI knowledge as well as to resources have been established or identified in over 30 European countries. They act as a gateway for academia and industry to problem-related experts and projects. The European Centre of Excellence in Exascale Computing “Research on AI- and Simulation-Based Engineering at Exascale” (CoE RAISE) brings AI and next-generation HPC architectures together by optimizing and developing methods for representative large-scale applications.

Experts of CoE RAISE and the NCCs of the Czech Republic, Iceland, and Germany presented their progress in AI-related research at the “AI- and simulation-based engineering workshop”, which took place in the Grandior Hotel in Prague on the first of December 2022. After an introduction to the projects, overarching and cross-sectional AI- and HPC technologies were presented. This included talks on recent instances of optimization of machine learning methods and the usage of new disruptive technologies such as quantum-based computers. The session was followed by a parallel session on compute- and data-driven cases spanning many fields of application from aerospace, combustion, and energy harvesting to fundamental physics, additive manufacturing, and remote sensing and seismic imaging, to name just a few. The workshop closed with a second parallel session presenting important activities of the NCCs related to novel AI software and hardware technologies that are offered to industry and academia.

Researchers from various supercomputing centers, universities, and companies showed great interest in this workshop, and the high quality of the presentations led to lively discussions and opened collaboration opportunities. These discussions continued during the social event after the workshop, where the attendees exchanged their experiences and discussed their current AI-related challenges with the experts of CoE RAISE and the NCCs. This fruitful workshop demonstrated the importance of knowledge exchange between scientific and industrial sectors.

News_Andreas_Lintermann

Meet Andreas Lintermann from the CoE Raise

The HPCSE 2022 conference brought together experts from HPC and related scientific disciplines. We interviewed one of them –⁠ Andreas Lintermann from the supercomputing centre in Jülich, Germany who coordinates the European Centre of Excellence for Exascale Computing “Research on AI – and Simulation-Based Engineering at Exascale” (CoE RAISE). We are bringing you the interview with him in the following lines and we are looking forward to future collaboration.

Can you recall what made you interested in Computer Science so much that you chose it for your studies and career?

My passion for Computer Science started when I was a kid. I was offered an Atari computer as a birthday or Christmas present, I do not really remember, at around the age of 7. I played games and had a lot of fun. At that time, I was also very much interested in understanding how to program computers and started this by simply copying source code from a poster that came with the Atari.

Later on, at school, I opted for Computer Science as a specific topic. The teacher was very supportive, and I even helped him to administrate the computer network at school.

Briefly, Computer Science was one of my main interests. That is why I decided to study Computer Science at RWTH Aachen University. At first, my focus was indeed not on HPC – I majored in Computer Graphics and Multimedia. It was only during my Ph.D. studies that I focused more on parallel implementations and gained a background in HPC. Subsequently, I became the group leader of the Simulation and Data Lab FSE, bridging the Engineering community of the University to the HPC experts at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC). This is when I got in even closer contact to JSC, where, after some time, I started to work full time. Since then, HPC has become a crucial part of my daily work life and there is no way to avoid it (laugh).

At the Jülich Supercomputing Centre, you are the Industry Relations Manager. What exactly does this job entail?

This initiative started in 2016 when the Head of the Administrative Division at JSC asked me if I would be interested in providing support to industry and small and medium enterprises (SMEs). I joined the Industry Relations Team (IRT), representing the first point of contact for industry approaching the research center with HPC-related matters. At first, the activities were only about selling computing time and we were only able to work reactively. That is, we did not actively approach industry nor did we directly offer our services to them.

With the EuroCC project, we want to adopt a more proactive approach. In fact, the idea is to move away from a simple provision of computational time. Instead, it is the aim to set up true collaborations with industry and to offer them our consulting or contract research services.

Regarding good practices, we are able to benefit from the expertise we have in the different SDLs, which, for example, operate in the realm of Engineering, Biology, Astrophysics, etc. With the support of the domain scientists, it is possible to find tailored solutions for individual requests coming from industry. A company can approach the IRT and we are able to match the requirements to the appropriate expertise at JSC.

How are you enjoying the HPCSE 2022 conference, and what benefits is your participation at it bringing?

At first, I must admit that this is the most beautiful scene for a conference I have ever been to. The food is brilliant and I really enjoy the social events.

As far as the benefits are concerned, I do much appreciate connecting to other people, exchanging knowledge, and learning what other people are working on. Also, attending conferences in general again represents an opportunity to find future partners for my projects. The personal exchange was really something that I missed very much during the COVID-19 pandemic and this conference represents a turning point as it is the first live event I’m able to attend after more than 2 ½ years – it feels so good to go back to normal.

Has any of the research projects presented at the conference drawn your attention?

Yes, many. For example, today I attended the talk by Carsten Burstedde called Adaptive mesh refinement in HPC and applications in the geosciences, which I found very interesting because it is very much related to my research. I also really appreciated the presentations around the EuroCC project as I’m also involved in the establishment of the EuroCC National Competence Center (NCC) in Germany. I believe that there is significant overlapping interest in both the Czech and German NCCs, which could spark a more intensive collaboration. Furthermore, several presentations and posters related to biofluid mechanics or even to neuroscience caught my attention.

In summary, I believe that this conference provides a good and inhomogeneous mixture of research projects, allows to identify commonalities between different domains, and inspires interdisciplinary thinking across borders.

Since 2021, you have been coordinating the European Union CoE RAISE project (The European Center of Excellence in Exascale Computing “Research on AI- and Simulation-Based Engineering at Exascale”), which you are presenting in your contribution to the conference. What does this project consist of and who will benefit from its results?

The main idea of this project is to develop new artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that make use of the next generation of supercomputers (Exascale systems).

The developments are made along various kinds of use cases coming, for example, from the energy sector, aerospace, transportation, fundamental physics, or manufacturing.  Two kinds of use cases are considered in this project. Compute-driven use cases are those that generate most of their data by large-scale numerical simulations, for example, using Computational Fluids Dynamics (CFD) methods. The data-driven use cases employ sensor technologies to gather huge amounts of data, for example, the experiments that are run at CERN with the Large-Hadron Collider (LHC) collect massive amounts of data that need to be processed.

Orthogonal to these use cases, which are driven by the domain scientists, AI and HPC experts contribute to the project by enabling code scalability, development and inclusion of novel AI technologies into the use cases, and by performing porting and performance engineering activities on cutting-edge production and prototype HPC systems.

It is the aim to close the gap between domain, AI, and HPC experts and to provide the European research and industrial community with a unique AI framework that covers AI training scripts, pre-trained models, AI workflows, as well as best-practice guides and tutorials. Related to that, CoE RAISE offers free education on AI technologies and on the usage of cutting-edge HPC hardware. In the future, services around those technologies will also be provided to the community.

What work-related activities are you looking forward to in the coming months?

At the moment, a lot of activities are around CoE RAISE. We are preparing for the review coming up in September and more deliverables to be submitted to the EU at the end of June. Furthermore, we are pushing our activities in the EuroCC project and continue to enhance our service and educational portfolio, as well as strive for further collaborations with other NCCs.

Outside of that, we have other running proposals and projects.

In September, we expect to start another EU-funded project called interTwin related to the development of digital twins for various applications. The aim is to develop a generalizable digital twin engine. Together with CERN, we are going to concentrate on the development of generalizable workflows for AI.

We submitted a draft proposal to a call from the German Ministry of Education and Research regarding AI in systematic medicine. In this draft proposal we suggest to continue our work that we perform in the context of the analysis of respiratory flows. Here, we aim at including AI technologies for pathology classification and shape optimization as a suggestion for surgery planning in the workflows. As the proposal has been submitted just recently, we are still waiting for the review, and hope for a positive evaluation.

The German Government decided to spend 15-billion Euros on supporting the structural change in the coal mining region, where the research center Jülich is located. Therefore, we proposed the creation of the so-called Agency for Cognitive Computing (ACC), whose aim is to provide regional industry and SMEs with expertise in AI and HPC, and work together with them on their problems in this respect. This will be accompanied by the extension of an existing educational program in the direction of data science and AI. New young researchers are educated in these topics to directly work together with companies on-site on their problems and make use of the HPC resources the research center has to offer.

Thank you for the interview and we wish you plenty of further achievements.


Andreas Lintermann is a postdoctoral researcher at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. He is the Head of the Simulation and Data Laboratory ‘‘Highly Scalable Fluid & Solids Engineering’’ (SDL FSE) at JSC. Since January 2021, Andreas is the Coordinator of the European Center of Excellence in Exascale Computing “Research on AI- and Simulation-Based Engineering at Exascale” (CoE RAISE).

His research focuses on bio-fluid mechanical analyses of respiratory diseases, lattice-Boltzmann methods, high-performance computing (HPC), high-scaling meshing methods, task-based programming models, modular supercomputing architectures (MSA), machine learning (ML) algorithms, and efficient multi-physics coupling strategies.

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ISC2022

ISC High Performance 2022 exceeded all expectations

ISC High Performance is considered the world’s oldest and Europe’s most significant event regarding high performance computing (HPC), machine learning and high-performance data analytics. After two years of online presence, the conference offered an opportunity for scientists, supercomputing centres, companies, and HPC enthusiasts to meet again.

ISC 2022 introduced the latest advancements in HPC, focusing on all key developments in system design, applications, programming models, machine learning, and emerging technologies. It was held from May 29 to June 2 in the brand new Congress Centre in Hamburg for on-site attendees. Nevertheless, the conference also offered an extensive program for online visitors. This year´s conference exceeded all expectations since it welcomed 3007 attendees. Out of the 137 exhibiting organisations, 125 presented their activities within the booths.

IT4Innovations wasn´t missing among the exhibitors and promoted the activities of the National Supercomputing Center and the projects it is involved in. The Czech National Competence Centre in HPC highlighted its activities thanks to the EuroCC video and the presentation of its success stories. We were distributing leaflets and the visitors to the conference could grab promotional items with the logo of the EuroCC project. Many attendees joined our lucky draw, which awarded three lucky winners with wonderful prizes.

The ISC always includes the announcement of the latest TOP500, Green500, and HPCG lists. The first place went to the Frontier supercomputer, which is the first supercomputer ever to break the magic 1 exaflop level. The second place belongs to the Fugaku supercomputer and the third in the ranking was LUMI supercomputer even though it is using only one-third of its peak performance now. We are excited about this result, and we are proud that thanks to the membership of IT4Innovations in the LUMI consortium Czech scientists will also gain access to this supercomputer.

More info about the conference can be found here: www.isc-hpc.com

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