Klaus-Dieter Schürmann, ŠKODA AUTO Board Member for Finance and IT, explained, “By installing the new high-performance computer, ŠKODA AUTO is further expanding the largest commercial computing centre in the Czech Republic. We are thereby continuing to press ahead on our path to becoming a digital company and are creating an important technical prerequisite for maximising the use of current as well as future technologies and thus, for example, making development processes as efficient and economic as possible.”
Klaus Blüm, Head of ŠKODA IT, added, “In 1969, the first mainframe server from IBM started operation at ŠKODA. With our new supercomputer we are now setting benchmarks in IT once again, exactly 50 years later – although this time on a totally different scale. Our new supercomputer features two computer clusters, 1,008 computing nodes and 24,192 processor cores. Overall, this allows us to reach a computing power of two petaFLOPS. This means it is 67 billion times more powerful than ŠKODA AUTO’s first mainframe server.”
The computing power will gradually be increased to 15 petaFLOPS, corresponding to 15 quadrillion computing operations per second and increasing the current data processing speed approximately tenfold. Thus, the ŠKODA data centre will be capable of extremely challenging high-performance computing (HPC) in future. Technical Development and Production will be using the capacities for visualisations, virtual reality presentations and simulations (such as in the further development of topics relating to pedestrian protection), for simulations in aeroacoustics and aerodynamics, and for the further development of the engine portfolio.
In future, the data of connected cars will also be stored at the computing centre; for this, the highest possible data protection requirements apply. Furthermore, as part of ‘Green Data’, which is an integral part of the company’s ‘Green Future’ strategy, the office buildings will be heated using the waste heat generated when cooling the data centre in future, for example.
ŠKODA AUTO’s IT department is one of the largest of its kind in the Czech Republic and ranks among the fastest growing business areas. The team of experts, which is also responsible for the new data centre, is constantly scouting for new, talented employees. Currently, there are numerous vacancies being advertised – ranging from experts in AI to SAP specialists as well as data and business analysts. Successful applicants can look forward to working in an ultramodern, state-of-the-art work environment.
