The RTU High Performance Computing Center (HPC) has been modernizing the high-performance computing infrastructure for several years, and with the support of «Mikrotīkls», human capital investment will be added as a driver for innovation.
«The HPC infrastructure at RTU can be updated thanks to European international projects and private donations. Thanks to a generous gift from «Mikrotīkls» donations, the high-performance computing infrastructure is becoming more and more powerful, modern, and user-friendly. This year we can afford to invest not only in technical equipment, but also in the growth of the team by attracting new experts and trainees. This helps RTU implement important projects, develop services for scientists, students, and industry», said Head of HPC Center and leading researcher Lauris Cikovskis.
He added that with «Mikrotīkls» support, a unique program for students called «INNO HEALTH HUB» is currently being implemented. The HUB will allow to students to work, connect, collaborate, create, share ideas, and use RTU’s HPC infrastructure to work in interdisciplinary teams to create solutions for two critical health challenges. These challenges are related to the analysis of big data or genomic data in cancer diagnosis – the use of big data in the genetics, diagnosis, and prognosis of malignant tumors in pediatrics, and the use of artificial intelligence in the analysis of big or genomic data for early cancer diagnosis in high-resolution images. Raising the competence of students and the university’s HPC infrastructure is an essential prerequisite for the creation of collaborations and innovations that may result in future medical technologies to help shape the future of public health.
The HPC cluster has already been supplemented this year by a new generation of processors and additional computing nodes, which are already appreciated by existing supercomputer users.
This successful partnership between «Mikrotīkls» and the RTU HPC center was established in 2019. With the company’s support, both high-performance data storage and improved infrastructure have been created to handle large volumes of data. Cloud computing infrastructure has also been renewed, which provide users with a more user-friendly HPC infrastructure. These investments have also contributed to the development of the open HPC platform, the basis of which was created in the project «National Competence Centers within EuroHPC (EuroCC)».
The RTU HPC Center promotes the use of digital technologies in research, provides access to modern supercomputing infrastructure; modeling and simulation services; and organizes training and seminars related to various topics of digital science, with the goals of making science more modern and competitive.
The center also cooperates with companies and other research organizations and actively participates in large international projects. This involvement includes the creation of the «SuperS» supercomputing/high-performance computing competence center, which was developed in cooperation with the University of Latvia to promote the use of HPC opportunities in higher education, research, public administration, and industry. The RTU HPC center operates within the RTU Innovations Vice-Rector’s Service.
«Mikrotīkls» has been an RTU Development Fund cooperation partner since 2017. In that time, the company has donated more than 3.25 million euros for the modernization of RTU laboratories, infrastructure improvement and the purchase of equipment.
