The I4DI consortium was established in Slovakia

The I4DI consortium (Innovation for Digital Infrastructure) was established in Slovakia with the ambition to design the fastest supercomputer with artificial intelligence in the world.

The I4DI consortium has been formed with the aim of developing European supercomputing solutions to support regional capacity in addressing the energy and performance issues and challenges facing the industry today.

One of the founding members of the I4DI consortium is PosAm. Others are Tachyum, TowerCom, the Slovak Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Investment, Regional Development and Informatization. PosAm together with its partners will lend their extensive and specialised experience to the emerging National Supercomputing Centre (NSC).

“PosAm operates successfully in the area of public administration and state budget management, industry and workforce management, where we intensively innovate and implement elements of artificial intelligence in order to optimise routes and save time, costs and the environment. Our transport solutions – an intelligent comprehensive city parking system and vehicle monitoring – work in real time and with elements of AI and ML. Processing large amounts of data in real time is a basic prerequisite for seamless operation of these solutions. PosAm brings real business scenarios and expertise in usage of higher computing power for more accurate AI and ML algorithms. Together with the expertise and experience of other members of the consortium, we will help to transform the entire EU region from an importer of data centre and supercomputer technologies to an innovative leader in the research of global AI and HPC solutions,” says Tomáš Kysela, CTO of PosAm.

“We look forward to working with our I4DI partners in finding solutions that will change the foundations that limit traditional data centres today.”

According to a recent report, the European Union consumes 30% of the world’s supercomputing resources, but on its territory it owns only 5% of these resources. This discrepancy prompted the European Commission to seek ways how to take control over its destiny by building its own supercomputers and data centres with better resource efficiency and usability, lower emissions and less environmental impact than can be achieved with the traditional IT infrastructure.

Data centres designed by the I4DI consortium, such as NSC, will serve as a blueprint for future government and commercial cloud initiatives, such as InoCloud. With the universal use of resources for standard IT systems and the role of artificial intelligence, these centres will be more efficient and will increase hardware availability to almost 90% compared to the current 40%.

I4DI will provide the European HPC market with freedom and openness, such as Open Compute. The NSC is expected to gradually operate the fastest supercomputers for artificial intelligence in the world and help to address the challenges of ensuring EU data and technological sovereignty. While most of the existing data in the EU is currently managed and monetised by US corporations, I4DI and NSC will serve as an example of how the IT sovereignty of the future should be built. It will help transform not only Slovakia but the entire EU from an import of data centres and supercomputing technologies to an innovative leader in the research and development of AI and HPC solutions for the whole world.