Organization

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IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB – Technical University of Ostrava (Czech Republic) 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. 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 supercomputer in the Czech Republic on the day of its installation, 69th in the world (on the TOP500 list), and ranked 15th in the Green500 ranking of the most energy-efficient supercomputers. 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. 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. Furthermore, IT4Innovations is also involved in a whole range of educational activities focused on HPC, HPDA, and AI.