Kategórie
General

NCC Slovakia at the ITAPA 2021 congress

On November 9th, 2021 the second day of the Itapa congress took place featuring several contributions focused on high-performance computing as an important tool for enabling innovations, ensuring the competitiveness of economies as well as for supporting security and scientific research. The Slovak National Competence Centre for HPC in collaboration with the congress organizers invited Mr. Gustav Kalbe as one of the keynote speakers. As a representative of the EuroHPC JU, he covered this topic from the global and European point of view.

NCC Slovakia at the ITAPA 2021 congress

On November 9th, 2021 the second day of the ITAPA congress took place featuring several contributions focused on high-performance computing as an important tool for enabling innovations, ensuring the competitiveness of economies as well as for supporting security and scientific research. The Slovak National Competence Centre for HPC in collaboration with the congress organizers invited Mr. Gustav Kalbe as one of the keynote speakers. As a representative of the EuroHPC JU he covered this topic from the global and European point of view.

The following panel discussion, organized with the support of the NCC, highlighted the situation in HPC in Slovakia. Lukáš Demovič, who is the director of the Centre of Operations,  Slovak Academy of Sciences - an institution operating the only publicly available HPC infrastructure – spoke about the current possibilities, ongoing projects and ambitious plans for significant expansion of computational capacities in Slovakia. The importance of investments and support of this field was stressed also by other speakers. Prof. Ivan Štich, who is active within the TREX CoEshowed use cases of 2D materials modelling using the QMC method,, which is, thanks to it’s robustness and scalability, especially suited for utilizing the coming exascale systems. Prof. Mária Bieliková from the Kempelen institute of intelligent technologies introduced a newly developed large neural language model for Slovak. She also mentioned the aspect of large energy consumption that comes with many AI applications and models together with the strategies scientists employ to mitigate this problem. Jozef Vivoda described models for numerical weather forecasting, employed and (co)developed at the Slovak hydrometeorological institutetheir level of precision as well as computational demands. Robert Cisár from the Tachyum company and Luboš Kolář from HPE took part in the discussion as representatives from the private sector.

All speakers agreed on the necessity of investing into HPC technologies at the national level and the importance of supporting the whole ecosystem at the same time. The lack of concept on the state level and the lengthy and disproportionately complicated process of public procurement were identified as main problems when planning and purchasing new supercomputers. The National competence centre is focusing it’s efforts primarily on building the supporting ecosystem and raising the adoption of HPC tools and connected technologies across all sectors. Without an available HPC infrastructure, however, this task remains a challenge.

Speakers' presentations:
How is Slovakia doing with supercomputing? – Lukáš Demovič.
HPC and numeric weather forecast in Slovakia -Jozef Vivoda.
Who can afford artificial intelligence today? – Mária Bieliková.
Is a supercomputer suitable only for science? – Robert Cisár.
2D semiconductor modeling by exascale computing methods – Ivan Štich.
The supercomputer is not just about computing power – Luboš Kolář.
Why do we need supercomputers? Discussion.



Central European Working Group in Slovenia 19 May - On May 19, 2025, we met with representatives of National Competence Centres for High-Performance Computing (HPC) from Central European countries. The in-person meeting of the Central European Working Group, held in Slovenia, provided us with an exceptional opportunity to exchange experiences, strengthen regional cooperation, and discuss the shared challenges and opportunities we face within the EuroCC project. We built professional relationships and engaged in constructive discussions with representatives from neighboring countries that, like Slovakia, are running their national HPC competence centres and working on their continuous development. Such meetings play an important role in shaping common approaches, identifying synergies, and sharing best practices in delivering services to users—whether they are research institutions, the public sector, or businesses.
What Is Artificial Intelligence Capable of Today? Watch the Recording of the Webinar "Training Machines to Detect Any Object" 16 May - Dňa 13. mája 2025 sa uskutočnil odborný webinár s názvom Trénovanie strojov na detekciu ľubovoľného objektu, ktorý pripravil RNDr. Andrej Lúčny, PhD. z Fakulty matematiky, fyziky a informatiky Univerzity Komenského v Bratislave. Prednáška bola zameraná na aktuálne výzvy a riešenia v oblasti strojového videnia a umelej inteligencie, pričom sa venovala najmä schopnosti systémov rozpoznávať objekty bez nutnosti ich predchádzajúcej kategorizácie.
HPC and Artificial Intelligence: Joining Forces for the Future of Technology 15 May - V utorok 14. mája 2025 sme sa zúčastnili podujatia PyData Slovakia & Bratislava Meetup #29, ktoré sa uskutočnilo v Bratislave. Stretnutie dátovej a technologickej komunity sa nieslo v duchu aktuálnych trendov v oblasti umelej inteligencie, s dôrazom na pochopenie fungovania veľkých jazykových modelov (Large Language Models – LLMs), ktoré dnes čoraz výraznejšie ovplyvňujú rôzne oblasti nášho života – od komunikácie, cez vzdelávanie až po riadenie procesov vo firmách a verejnej správe. Hlavným rečníkom večera bol Radovan Kavický, prezident a hlavný dátový vedec v GapData Institute, ktorý svojou prednáškou s názvom "Under the Hood of LLM" pútavo predstavil, čo sa skrýva pod povrchom dnešných pokročilých jazykových modelov.