Today European chip startup SiPearl announced it is moving into its operational phase. The company is now the 27th member of the European Processor Initiative (EPI) consortium, alongside research institutes, universities, supercomputing centers, and leading names from the IT, electronics and automotive sectors.
By delivering supercomputing power, energy efficiency and backdoor-free security, the solutions that we are developing with support from the EPI members will enable Europe to gain its independence and, more importantly, to ensure its technological sovereignty on the market for high performance computing, which has become one of the key drivers for economic growth”, explains Philippe Notton, SiPearl’s CEO.
SiPearl will bring their joint project to life by developing and marketing the next generation of high-performance, low-power microprocessors. As a natural candidate to equip the future European exascale supercomputer, SiPearl and its solutions will help drive the development of the European market for high performance computing (HPC), as well as its strategic applications such as artificial intelligence and connected mobility.
High performance computing is a branch of IT that is focused on engineering and scientific modelling and simulation tasks that require such high levels of resources that they cannot be processed with general-use computers and instead require supercomputers. High performance computing is crucial for meeting a growing range of increasingly complex strategic challenges. Historically used for research, weather forecasting, oil and gas prospecting, defense, chemicals and finance, etc., it has become essential for supporting the deployment of artificial intelligence, connected mobility, smart cities, bioengineering, cybersecurity, and personalized medicine.
To secure its independence and leadership on the global high performance computing market, the European Union responded by launching two flagship initiatives in 2017. While the EuroHPC joint undertaking aims to deploy a world-class high performance computing infrastructure in Europe, the EPI consortium was selected to draw up, maintain and lead the roadmap for developing a range of high-performance, low-power microprocessors in Europe to equip supercomputers in particular.
