Barcelona Supercomputing Center

In a signed agreement published in December of 2022, the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) called for proposals to fund a €270M effort to develop a European HPC infrastructure built on the RISC-V open ecosystem. The effort also includes fostering an overall open-source RISC-V community, code porting capabilities, and the development of chiplets based on the RISC-V open instruction set architecture (ISA). RISC-V stands apart from other ISAs as an open-standard that is free to license and has no IP requirements. RISC-V currently has a few offerings in the base product but has clear potential in meeting flexibility and customizability needs over proprietary chip counterparts.

High performance computers (HPCs) are recognized globally as fundamental tools for conducting R&D, innovation and advancing the economic competitiveness of nations. More countries than ever are increasing their spending on HPC infrastructure and critical associated areas such as AI, cloud, quantum computing, applications development and optimization, and workforce development and retention. The European Commission (EC), through the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (JU), Digital Europe Programme (DEP), and Horizon 2020/Europe funding programs, fully recognized this criticality for the European Union (EU) to fortify its global HPC leadership position. Further refining and extending its initial long-term mission, the JU has instituted a Four Pillar Strategy focusing on Infrastructure, Technologies, Applications, and Take-Up and Skill Sets, to define an approach to help realize its HPC ambitions. Continued execution of this strategy should well-position the EU to achieve its goals of deploying an integrated world-class supercomputing and data infrastructure.