The European Processor Initiative (EPI) is a project currently implemented under the first stage of the Framework Partnership Agreement signed by the Consortium with the European Commission (FPA: 800928), whose aim is to design and implement a roadmap for a new family of low-power European processors for extreme scale computing, high-performance Big-Data and a range of emerging applications.
The FPA was first called for by European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme in the 2017 calls (H2020-ICT-2017-2), under the topic ICT-42-2017 Framework Partnership Agreement in European low-power microprocessor technologies.
The specific challenge of the topic announced that the EC’s aim was to support the creation of a world-class European High-Performance Computing and Big Data ecosystem built on two exascale computing machines, which rank in the first 3 places of the world. Such a processor would help “foster an HPC ecosystem capable of developing new European technology such as low-power HPC chips“.
EPI consortium was chosen and proceeded to sign an agreement with the European Commission and plan the first stage of development. The Specific Grant Agreement of the European Processor Initiative (EPI-SGA1: 826647) was signed afterwards and the consortium kicked off the project in December 2018.
This proposal comes as a result of European strategic plans to support the next generation of computing and data infrastructures, as EU efforts are now synchronized in establishment of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, a legal and funding entity which will enable pooling of the Union’s and national resources on High-Performance Computing to acquire, build and deploy in Europe the most powerful supercomputers of the world.
In order to spearhead these efforts, the EPI project is established as one of the cornerstones of this strategic plan – it gathers 28 partners from 10 European countries to develop the processor and ensure that the key competence of high-end chip design remains in Europe. European scientists and industry will be able to access exceptional levels of energy-efficient computing performance.
Development of a new processor to be at the core of future computing systems will be divided into several streams:
The results from the two streams related to the general-purpose processor and accelerator chips will generate a heterogeneous, energy-efficient CPU for use in both standard and non-traditional and compute-intensive segments, e.g. automotive where SoA in autonomous driving requires significant computational resources.
EPI strives to maximize the synergies between the two streams and will work with existing EU initiatives on technology, infrastructure and applications, to position Europe as a world leader in HPC and emerging markets for exascale era such as automotive computing for autonomous driving.
| Project Title: | European Processor Initiative |
| Project acronym: | EPI |
| Call identifier: | H2020-ICT-2016-2017/H2020-ICT-2017-2 |
| Grand agreement number: | 826647 |
| Project coordinator | Bull SAS |
| Duration: | 36 months |
| Number of partners: | 28 |
| Starting date: | Dec 1st 2018 |
