A wider context to the project Hybrid

It is my pleasure to inform you that the hybrid GPU-CPU cluster is finally assembled and the first "burn-out" tests of the equipment are underway!

Since the scheduling script is still to be designed, for now the cluster will be opened for logins on individual nodes that can access two GPUs, so that project collaborators can start playing around with the coding and code performance.

We were slowed down considerably due to various problems in purchasing the equipment and assembling the room for the cluster (power supply, acoustic isolation). The good news is that we have a dedicated room for our equipment and a dedicated classroom that will follow in the second part of the project by the end of the summer. I have to mention that the cluster would not be assembled without the hard work of our two project assistants: Jurica Teklić and Dubravko Balić.


Another very good news is that, after a long wait, the Ministry of Science and Education approved the novice position (PhD position) for one graduate student working on the Hybrid.

As an effort to expand this project and get some money for additional personnel and travel support, we applied for a new research grant and now we are waiting for the results of the first round of evaluations. The important news regarding this application is that we have two companies involved as project partners and technical support to our project. One is VEUS d.o.o. from Zagreb and the other is Mirriad Limited from UK. The project partner is also the Department of Astronomy at the University of Washington as the host of our collaboration with the LSST project (http://www.lsst.org). This collaboration with LSST is especially interesting due to the scale and importance of the LSST project.

In general, the project proposal has four main Themes that will receive a special attention if we get the funds:
1. Large scale data mining (handling large data sets such as the LSST database)
2. Computational microscope (simulation of macromolecules and materials on atomic scale in general)
3. Particle dynamics (N-body problems and dynamics of individual "particles" in various environments)
4. Weather Forecasting for Split region (improving weather forecasting models for Split region, which has a specific microclimate)