Over the years, the supercomputer family in Ostrava has grown, and there are plans for further growth. But what would supercomputers be without people who use them to carry out their research projects? At the time of opening, approximately 50 employees moved into the building, while over 150 people visit it regularly today. The vast majority of them are in research positions. The IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB – Technical University of Ostrava is a strategic large research infrastructure in the Czech Republic, and together with two other CESNET and CERIT-SC infrastructures, it forms the so-called e-infrastructure of the Czech Republic e-INFRA CZ.
On 26 August, it had been just five years since IT4Innovations moved to a new building constructed with the support of the European Structural Funds within the Operational Program Research and Development for Innovation. At the occasion of the 5th anniversary, a modernized supercomputer Anselm will be put into operation, with an output of 830 TFlop/s. “The demand for computing resources in our centre currently exceeds our capacity by more than 100 per cent. Therefore, I am pleased that by installing an upgraded cluster, we can accommodate more people interested in computing time in the next round of the grant competition and also meet their demands for the latest technologies such as GPU accelerators, ” says Vít Vondrák, IT4Innovations Director.
In the five years, which the IT4Innovations building is celebrating this year, the number of employees has also increased significantly. In 2015, only about 50 people moved here. Today, the building is used by over 150 people, of which 70% are scientists, and the rest are workers providing supercomputer services and administration.
And the Director, Vít Vondrák, wishes the following for the building, and hence the whole IT4Innovations: “We have come a long way in the last five years. We have become a supercomputer centre that is well registered on the European map of supercomputer centres, as evidenced not only by our membership in prestigious organizations but also by the success of the EuroHPC petascale system. It will be installed in IT4Innovations next year. In the scientific field, we have achieved many successes, we are part of international and national projects. In some of them, we are coordinators. All of this would not have been possible without a great team consisting of many experts, and my thanks go to them. Without them, IT4Innovations would not be where it is today. ”