Set micro-network news (text / Xiaobei) In recent years, Europe has been in the process of super-calculation. The European Commission hopes to deploy a supercomputer and corresponding data base with computing power of tens of billions of times per second from 2022 to 2023. Facilities, and plans to make their computing power exceed the above levels by 2026~2027.
This year, Europe continues to add code for self-developed supercomputer microprocessors.
In March of this year, the European Commission announced the launch of the European Processor Program (EPI) to collaboratively design and develop a low-power microprocessor and bring it to market. The program brings together 23 companies from 10 European countries. Partners, and experts from all walks of life. They will design and develop the first European HPC system-on-chips and accelerators through a collaborative design solution. All components will be implemented and validated on a prototype system that will be fully autonomous in Europe. The foundation of tens of billions of computers. EPI is part of the European High Performance Computing Joint Venture (EuHPC-JU), which is responsible for processor projects.
In June of this year, the European Commission proposed to set up the EU's first 'Digital Europe' project and allocate 9.2 billion euros to it. Among them, 2.7 billion euros will be used in the field of supercomputers and data processing.
A month ago, Professor Mateo Valero of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center revealed some plans for high performance computing (HPC) system-on-chip and accelerators.
The 'conceptions' for the two chips are: HPC System-on-Chip (General Purpose CPU) based on Arm architecture, the first generation will introduce the previous generation of tens of billions of computers in 2021~2022, and the second generation will be officially introduced into the hundred Billion billion computer systems; accelerator chips based on RISC-V architecture, will also experience two generations of products.
It is reported that the third-generation system-on-chip will be ready in 2024~2025, integrating the general-purpose CPU core and acceleration core, which will be applied to the automotive field. However, Mateo Valero's description of the processor is very simple, which explains from the side. Perhaps just a preliminary idea, detailed planning has not taken shape.
The head of the EPI processor has said that the Arm architecture is one of the HPC processor alternatives and is currently in the negotiation phase, with detailed product plans expected in August.
One thing to note is that the 'Mont-Blanc Project' project at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Barcelona is built using the Arm Cortex-A15 architecture, which is the first time Arm has tried high performance computing (HPC).
EPI project director Philippe Notton said that the IP in the Mont-Blanc 2020 project will be reused in the EPI project in order to commercialize it. In addition to the IP from the Mont-Blanc 2020 project, the EPI project will also use external IP and self- Research accelerators and other products. Therefore, EPI plans to use the Arm architecture is very likely.
An EPI project staff said that although Europe is looking to self-developing SoCs, the pursuit of complete 'Europeanization' is not realistic because of the lack of local technologies such as CPU and memory. This is why we are developing accelerators based on RISC-V. RISC-V already has some ready-made instructions and tools, we don't have to start from scratch, but unfortunately, it has not reached the HPC production level, which still takes a while.
It is reported that Europe will self-develop memory controllers, on-chip network (NOC), power management and connection technology for billions of computer systems, but the memory will use off-the-shelf HBM3 memory. The research and development content of EPI project only includes processor, SDK/ Compiler and other software.