Eviden, a subsidiary of French IT group Atos, and American chipmaker AMD announced on Tuesday that they have secured a contract to build an exascale supercomputer in France, as Europe seeks to close its technological gap with the United States.
The machine, named after French computer scientist Alice Recoque, will be installed in France, with construction set to begin by the end of 2026.
It will be the second exascale supercomputer in Europe, following Jupiter in Germany, with a total estimated cost of EUR554 million over five years, the companies said in a joint statement.
An exascale supercomputer reaches a peak performance of one exaflop—a measure of computing power equivalent to 10 million desktop computers, according to Eviden and AMD.
The project is led by GENCI, the French agency for high-performance computing, and operated by the CEA, a public research organization. Funding will be provided by EuroHPC and the Jules Verne consortium.
"Sovereignty was a key requirement for EuroHPC and the French government," GENCI CEO Philippe Lavocat told Reuters. The supercomputer will be used to advance AI models, climate change modeling, and medical research, he added.
Around 70% of the machine's components will be produced in Europe, compared to about half for Jupiter.
"We are integrating a new network technology that replaces Nvidia's solution used in Jupiter," said Emmanuel Le Roux, head of advanced computing and AI at Eviden.
(Reporting by Gianluca Lo Nostro, French version by Elena Smirnova, edited by Kate Entringer)
