In this talk from the 2018 HiPEAC event, Philippe Notton from Atos describes how the European Processor Initiative will help Europe achieve sovereignty in chips for advanced computing.
We expect to achieve unprecedented levels of performance at very low power, and EPI’s HPC and automotive industrial partners are already considering the EPI platform for their product roadmaps.
The main objectives of the EPI are to:
- Develop low-power processor technology to be included in a European pre-exascale system (capable of around 1016 calculations per second) and in European exascale systems (a billion billion or 1018 calculations per second)
- Guarantee that a significant part of that technology is European
- Ensure that the application areas of the technology are not limited only to HPC, but cover other areas such as the automotive sector or the data center, thus ensuring the overall economic viability of the initiative. One specific objective for the automotive sector is for instance to develop customized processors able to meet the performance needed for autonomous cars
- EPI will provide to the European industry and research a competitive HPC platform and data processing solutions at world class level in the best interest of data security and ownership
The EPI consortium proposes to create a long-term economic model by delivering a family of processors for the 3 markets:
- High Performance Computing
- Data centres and servers
- Autonomous vehicles
At its core, EPI puts in place the roadmap for European HPC chips and accelerators facilitating the development of pre-exascale and exascale machines as well as prototypes for automotive proofs of concept.
