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Photo Gallery: Art & Science Ostrava

At the beginning of the school year, on September 5, 2024, the ninth edition of the unique Art & Science Festival, which combines science, research and education with creative thinking and art, took place on the campus of VŠB-TUO. The scientific and artistic parts of the programme are naturally intertwined and complement each other, because “doing science” is always art and art is sometimes a science too.

Children, teachers and the general public had the opportunity to learn more about the world of supercomputing and, thanks to the National Centre of Competence for HPC, about the use of supercomputers in practice at the IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Centre’s booth. The lucky quiz round, puzzles and the knowledge game for super prizes were popular again.

Soak up the festival atmosphere from our photo gallery.

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ffplus

EUR 8 million for companies interested in solving their challenges with supercomputers

The FFplus project has launched a new open call for small and medium-sized European enterprises. The call is aimed at agile, innovative companies that decide to use supercomputers in practice and gain a competitive advantage in the market.

Strengthening innovation and development of European industry

The FFplus project is the fourth edition of a highly successful initiative that directly addresses how to help businesses overcome the barriers to using supercomputing and high-performance data analytics in practice or working with and developing generative AI. In particular, the aim is to strengthen the global competitiveness of European industry.

In recent years, dozens of companies from all over Europe have successfully passed the open calls for using supercomputers. Be inspired by their stories published on the FFplus website.  

The FFplus call is divided into two parts:

1. BUSINESS EXPERIMENTS

The first part of the call is aimed at enterprises with no previous supercomputing experience across all sectors. In this call, enterprises can submit their “experiments”, i.e. projects that solve a specific business challenge using supercomputing technologies, high-performance data analytics, and artificial intelligence. Experiments are expected to last a maximum of 15 months, with a scheduled commencement date of 1 January 2025.

Experiment duration expected: max. 15 months.

Planned start date: 1 January 2025.

An amount of EUR 4 million for funding experiments will be distributed among all selected individual projects. There is a limit of EUR 200,000 per experiment application.

The deadline for applications is 4 September 2024 at 5:00 p.m.

2. INNOVATION STUDIES

The second part of the FFplus call will support companies and startups that are already active in generative AI but lack the necessary computational resources to develop their own models. The aim is to facilitate and strengthen the technological development of European companies in AI.

Participating companies will be supported in increasing their innovation potential by leveraging new generative AI models, such as large language models (LLMs), based on their expertise, application domain, business model, and potential for expansion.

Submitted “innovation studies / use cases” must use extensive European supercomputing resources (pre-exascale and exascale) to develop and adapt generative AI models (e.g. LLM).

Experiment duration expected: max. 10 months.

Planned start date: 1 December 2024.

An amount of EUR 4 million for funding experiments will be distributed among all selected individual projects. There is a limit of EUR 300,000 per study application.

The deadline for applications is 4 September 2024 at 5:00 p.m.

Are you interested in this opportunity? Find out more on the FFplus website.

Contact us, and experts at the National Competence Centre in HPC will gladly assist with the experiment’s setup and submission.

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Veletrh vědy 2024 - superpočítačové centrum IT4Innovations

Supercomputers in the Spotlight at the 2024 Science Fair

The National Competence Center for High-Performance Computing (HPC) was once again a prominent presence at the Science Fair, the largest science popularisation event in the Czech Republic for children and the general public. At the IT4Innovations booth, the national supercomputing centre, more than 1800 participants engaged in the prize program. Overall, the event reported participation from over 58,000 science enthusiasts.

During the event, we primarily disseminated basic information about the existence of the national supercomputing center in Ostrava, which currently operates two supercomputers: Karolina and Barbora. We explained what supercomputers are, their applications, and who can access them. Additionally, we highlighted the opportunity for Czech companies to test the computational power of supercomputers through the services of the National Competence Center for HPC.

For those interested in deeper technical details, we showcased the retired hardware components of the Salomon supercomputer. Visitors could also verify their knowledge of supercomputing through a fun quiz, and the “Harry Potter and the Magic of Supercomputing” game was a big hit with children.

This year’s Science Fair, organized by the Czech Academy of Sciences since 2015, took place at the PVA Expo in Letňany, Prague, from May 30th to June 1st, 2024.

Feel free to check out the short photo report and immerse yourself in the local atmosphere!

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HPCSE 2024: New partnerships, discussions, and success stories of using supercomputers in practice

Successful partnership of the High-Performance Computing in Science and Engineering 2024 Conference

We are pleased to have had the opportunity to participate as a partner in organising the High-Performance Computing in Science and Engineering (HPCSE 2024) conference for the second time. Since 2013, IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center in Ostrava has organised the conference at regular two-year intervals.

Nearly 90 experts from the world of supercomputing, high-performance data analysis, AI, and quantum computing gathered at the Soláň Hotel in the Beskydy mountains from 20 to 23 May 2024. Experts, scientists, and representatives of Centres of Excellence and industry were present. At the conference, the National Competence Centre in HPC (NCC) presented its activities and services and, above all, its educational programmes and collaboration success stories in practice.

Tomáš Karásek, Head of the NCC, spoke during the presentation about the interest of Czech companies in using supercomputers.  “Since our foundation, we have already established a number of successful collaborations with companies in practice across industries. From healthcare to architectural studios and construction, energy, engineering, transport, security, industry, agriculture, and more,” says Tomáš Karásek.

Moreover, thanks to networking, we managed to establish new valuable contacts.  We discussed the possibilities of cooperation and networking with the community of Czech AI startups, for whom our services and European calls for computational resources may be interesting. The conference also produced interesting interviews with selected participants, which you can look forward to soon. So, stay in touch with us, whether it be via social media or the newsletter.

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ISC 2024: We presented Czech Success Stories to More Than 3,000 Participants of the European Supercomputing Conference

Visitors to ISC High Performance 2024, the largest European conference and exhibition of providers and users of supercomputing technologies, were introduced to several successful Czech collaborations in practice.

The conference was held in Hamburg, Germany, from 12 to 16 May. At the IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center booth, we presented mainly success stories produced in collaboration with companies testing the use of supercomputers in practice thanks to cooperation with the Czech National Competence Centre in HPC (NCC).

Our other objectives also included getting feedback and valuable suggestions in the survey of users’ educational needs, establishing new contacts for potential collaborations as well as meeting existing partners from the supercomputing community.

In addition, Tomáš Karásek, Head of the NCC, led one of the presentations at the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking booth focused on the EuroCC2 project and the role of local National Competence Centres in Europe.

During the conference, we also had the opportunity to learn about many examples of success stories of using supercomputers in practice. Would you like to know more? Follow our social networks.

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all hands meeting Slovakia

European National Competence Centres in HPC meeting held

From 22 to 24 March 2024, National Competence Centres in HPC (NCC) met, including the Czech one. The main topic of the event was a deeper connection between the National Competence Centres in HPC (NCC) and the Centres of Excellence (CoE), which deal with codes for European supercomputers. This year, NCC Slovakia invited representatives of each organisation from across Europe to Štrbské Pleso in the High Tatras.

While the National Competence Centres facilitate access to supercomputing technologies for companies, scientists, and public institutions, the Centres of Excellence develop and modify existing computer codes and applications so that they can be used at exascale computing power. (Note: exascale power corresponds to one billion billions – quintillion – operations per second).

The codes, which are produced by more than 10 European Centres of Excellence under the umbrella of the pan-European EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, are accessible to users across the European NCC network. Researchers and industry can use them to address their current challenges in areas as diverse as climate and weather, drug design, engineering, and astrophysics.

“This meeting was a unique opportunity to meet personally with various partners from the European supercomputing network. Thanks to this, new collaborations and projects can be established, and best practices as well as challenges and opportunities are shared,” summarised Kateřina Beranová, Communications Specialist at the National Competence Centre in HPC in the Czech Republic.

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EuroHPC Summit 2024, Antwerp Belgium

EuroHPC JU Summit 2024: The Science-Industry Nexus is Gaining Momentum

Collaboration between enterprises and scientists in high-performance computing (HPC), simulation, data analysis, and AI was a major topic at this year’s EuroHPC JU Summit. Panel discussions focused on the needs and challenges that businesses face in relation to the use of high-performance computing. Moreover, the fact that even humanities-focused projects are increasingly benefiting from the use of HPC was also emphasised.

“The use of supercomputers can help better understand us as human beings,” said Professor Julie M. Birkholz of Ghent University, who cooperates with the Royal Library of Belgium, in the first panel discussion on the conference’s third day. However, it is often the case that scientists based in the humanities and social sciences have neither experience with digital technologies nor with data analysis and supercomputers – they are thus reluctant to use them.

Yet collaboration between scientists across scientific fields yields valuable results. “For example, the automatic detection of data from historical handwritten records will help address climate issues. In turn, data from demographic and sociological measurements and journals can help address societal issues,” says Julie Birkholz. Of course, significant added value is also created by integrating scientific knowledge with industry and real-life applications.

Enterprises want to use the European supercomputing network,

but they need to be granted easy access

 

Last year’s EuroHPC Summit identified the need for intensive cooperation with industry. A year later, we better understand the needs and opportunities to enable SMEs or AI communities to access supercomputing technologies better. These are the tools that will allow them to grow and increase their efficiency.

Thanks to the European supercomputing network, enterprises appreciate that they can use the most advanced technology available. The field of supercomputing and AI is evolving rapidly, and it would be too expensive and challenging for SMEs to run their supercomputer. At the same time, they can use various specific architectures in the network instead of just one.

The conference showed that the pressing issues for enterprises include easy access to supercomputing clusters through unified software and services across different operators, real-time technical support, and data retention and security.

The traditional European HPC, AI, and QC community meeting was attended by EU political leaders, representatives of supercomputing centres, including IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, and industrial companies. The four-day summit took place in Antwerp, Belgium, from 18 to 21 March and was attended by 700 visitors.

For more, please read the IT4Innovations (IT4I) website. You will learn, for example, about the panel on energy efficiency of supercomputing systems, where one of the speakers was Ondřej Vysocký from the IT4I Infrastructure Research Lab.

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EuroHPC JU Access Call for AI and Data-Intensive Applications(4)

New Call for Enterprise: Get Compute Time for AI and Big Data Projects

EuroHPC JU has opened a new call for industry, SMEs, start-ups and the public sector to access supercomputing resources for working with Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Big Data.
The call focuses on supporting ethical AI, generative AI, big language models, machine learning and general big data-intensive applications.

This allows Czech businesses to get 1 year of free computing time on European supercomputers in two rounds:

✅ develop and test their AI applications,
✅ train own big language models LLM,
✅ work on machine learning ML,
✅ and data-intensive applications.

 

You can register your projects through 2 waves:
until April 15, 2024
until June 14, 2024

Do you want to help with the application process and increase your chances of acceptance?
Do not hesitate to contact us.

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The Startup Festival: Supercomputers as a Means to Accelerate Innovation (not only) for Startups

At the beginning of March, we promoted the National Competence Centre in HPC and our services at the Startup Festival 2024 in Prague. It was an opportunity for us to show startups and early-stage projects that their growth can be accelerated by supercomputers.

At the trade fair booth, we met with startups and discussed, for example, possible uses for supercomputers, current calls for computational resources, and cascade funding opportunities.

We were also thrilled to have convinced some Startup Festival participants that supercomputers are no science-fiction technology. They are just very powerful computers that can be used very well in practice across fields – from agriculture, industry, and healthcare to architecture and software development.

Besides the stand, Tomáš Karásek, Head of the National Competence Centre in HPC, gave a lecture on “Supercomputers as a means to accelerate innovation (not only) for startups.”

Moreover, we had an opportunity to promote the possibilities of high-performance computing for Czech businesses through a mini-interview for the Roklen24 portal.

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Training service survey

 

The courses of the National Competence Centre for HPC are designed to reflect the requirements of our users. We are planning our future training programme, and your feedback is crucial to us.

Developing a new training program that will advance your knowledge and skills in the fast-growing field of high-performance computing is impossible without your help.

We would like to ask you to complete this survey. It will take you approx. 10 minutes.

Also, we encourage you to distribute the questionnaire to communities interested in quality training in the areas of high-performance computing (HPC), high-performance data analysis (HPDA), artificial intelligence (AI), and quantum computing (QC).

Thank you in advance for taking the time to take the survey.

We look forward to hearing your perspective, opinions and comments.

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