Kazan University May Become a Center for High-Performance Computing Studies

A seminar on HPC was held on June 2nd.

The event was co-organized by the University and IT Business Solutions, the contractor that installed the KFU’s supercomputer in February 2016. KFU’s IT Director Dmitry Burmistrov said that it’s now important to advertise the cluster to interested parties in research, education, and business. The University can become the competence center for HPC studies.

The primary objective, however, is to make use of the supercomputer for scientific research. A tailored interface is now in the works to make it friendlier to all potential users.

Director of IT Business Solutions Marat Sadykov called this cluster a unique project – not only for Tatarstan but also for most other Russian provinces. He added that the complicated technical specification made the project especially appealing; there are only one or two such jobs a year in the whole country. He wished the University all the best in this innovative endeavor.

Other guests presenting their outlook on high-performance computing were IBM, Lenovo, Nvidia, and Russian software companies Fidesys and Sigma Technology.

Acting Chair of the Department of Intelligent Robotics Maksim Talanov spoke about the Department’s research in artificial consciousness with the help of HPC.

The Department currently tries to construct eight basic emotions, such as anger, joy, grief, etc. The team reproduces them on the supercomputer through specific neuromodulating mechanisms. The neuron network is very realistic and therefore requires significant computing power. The researchers have succeeded in recreating fear and are now working on joy and disgust. They hope to have basic outlines of all eight emotions within this year.

This project has attracted quite the interest from the scientific community, and several new clients are now considering using the cluster for projects in medicine and economics.

The seminar was joined by academics from Kazan, Ufa, Nizhny Novgorod, and Skolkovo. Big local companies SMP-Neftegaz and Radiopribor also sent their employees. Hopefully some of the attendees will soon join the pool of HPC users.