Department of Computer Systems
Info
The Department of Computer Systems is responsible for teaching mainly hardware-oriented courses in all study programs accredited at FIT (i.e. in the Bc, MSc, and PhD study programmes).
- Bioinformatics and Biocomputing (prof. Sekanina)
- Embedded systems (doc. Fučík)
- High Performance Computing (doc. Jaroš)
The lectures in most of the courses are supplemented with projects or laboratory sessions, where students acquire hands-on experience and skills with the latest software packages and hardware platforms (multiprocessor systems, embedded systems, design systems for FPGA, supercomputing, etc.). The following labs are operated at UPSY:
- Applied micro-controllers laboratory
- Printed circuit board laboratory
Scientific and research activities of the Department are focused on HW/SW architecture of computer systems at the levels of digital circuits, single- and many-core processors (including GPUs), embedded systems, application-specific integrated circuits, reconfigurable systems based on FPGAs, computer clusters and supercomputers. Other research is performed in the areas of fault- tolerant systems design, diagnostics, testing and reliability of digital systems, circuit design methods for low power, approximate computing, bio-inspired artificial intelligence for design and adaptation of digital systems, and brain signal processing methods (EEG, fMRI).
The most important application areas include:
- accelerated computer technologies for high-speed networks
- supercomputers in high performance demanding simulations
- low-power accelerators for deep learning
- adaptive hardware in FPGAs
- bio-inspired circuit design methods
- fault tolerant system design
- embedded and RT systems
- unconventional computer architecture
- neural engineering and medical applications
Members of the Department have been involved in many international (e.g., PAMMOTH, CITRUS, COST projects) and national research projects (including the National supercomputing center - IT4Innovations), collaborate with Czech and foreign universities, industrial partners, and other institutions, for example, with Cesnet - in the area of research and development of hardware accelerated network technologies. They have contributed to establishing new IT companies, for example, Camea, INVEA-TECH, RehiveTech, and BrnoLogic.
Members of the Department have contributed to the project, which led to developing unique hardware acceleration cards with network throughput 400 Gb/s. The collaboration of FIT and RehiveTech was awarded the Cooperation of the Year prize organized by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic in 2014. In the international competitions - Humies, annually organized at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computing (GECCO), the members of the Department received: 1 Gold medal (2015), 3 Silver medals (2008, 2011, 2016) and 2 Bronze (2014, 2018) medals. In 2017, prof. Sekanina's team was awarded the Czech Science Foundation President Award for excellent results of the Advanced Methods for Evolutionary Design of Complex Digital Circuits project. In 2018, dr. Kořenek's team was awarded the Minister of the Interior award for outstanding results in the area of security research. Dr. Vojtěch Mrázek was awarded The Czech Head prize in 2019. For other awards, see this link.
Research groups:
- Accelerated Network Technologies Research Group (ANT)
- Supercomputing Technologies Research Group SC@FIT (SC@FIT)
- Evolvable Hardware Research Group (EHW)
- Cognitive and Neural Engineering Research group (CANE)
- Dependable Digital Systems (DEPSYS)
Chronology of the Heads of the Department:
- prof. Ing. Václav Dvořák, DrSc. (2002 - 2005)
- doc. Ing. Zdeněk Kotásek, CSc. (2005 - 2016)
- prof. Ing. Lukáš Sekanina, Ph.D. (2016 - )
Seminar of the Department of Computer Systems is organized every Friday at 10 AM in room L314. See program.
Contact information
Department of Computer Systems
Božetěchova 2
612 00 Brno