Consortium partners of the European Processor Initiative (EPI) met in Brussels on December 18th and 19th 2018 to kick off the project that will be the cornerstone of EU’s strategic plans in High-Performance Computing.
The Initiative gathers 26 partners from 10 European countries with the aim of bringing to the market a low-power microprocessor and ensuring that the key competence of high-end chip design remains in Europe. The European Union’s Horizon 2020 program funded this new project with a special Framework Partnership Agreement. The initial stage is a three-year Special Grant Agreement 1, that is expected to finish in November 2021.
Experts gathered in EPI cover all the relevant areas for such a feat: High-Performance Computing research community, major supercomputing centres, and the computing, automotive and silicon industry as well as the potential scientific and industrial users. Through a co-design approach, it will design and develop the first European HPC System on Chip and accelerators through several major streams of operation:
- Common Platform and global architecture stream
- HPC general purpose processor stream
- Accelerator stream
- Automotive platform stream
The consortium agreed on the objectives of the kick-off which were to agree on the project management control, provide information on the technical development, define syncing points between tasks and ensure all stream leaders and Global Technical Leader have enough information to proceed with the projects schedule. On the first day, the partners discussed management and dissemination and communication activities, as well as global technical stream, in addition to a General Assembly meeting, while the second day was reserved for parallel sessions on specific streams.
