EUPEX aims to design, build, and validate the first EU platform for HPC, covering end-to-end the spectrum of required technologies with European assets: from the architecture, processor, system software, development tools to the applications.
The prototype will be designed to be open, scalable and flexible, including the modular OpenSequana-compliant platform and the corresponding HPC software ecosystem for the Modular Supercomputing Architecture.
Scientifically, it is a vehicle to prepare HPC, AI, and Big Data processing communities for upcoming European Exascale systems and technologies.
The hardware platform is sized to be large enough for relevant application preparation and scalability forecast, and a proof of concept for a modular architecture relying on European technologies in general and on European Processor Technology (EPI) in particular. In this context, a strong emphasis is put on the system software stack and the applications.
Being the first of its kind, EUPEX sets the ambitious challenge of gathering, distilling and integrating European technologies that the scientific and industrial partners use to build a production-grade prototype.
EUPEX will lay the foundations for Europe's future digital sovereignty. It has the potential for the creation of a sustainable European scientific and industrial HPC ecosystem and should stimulate science and technology more than any national strategy.
The consortium – constituted of key actors on the European HPC scene – has the capacity and the will to provide a fundamental contribution to the consolidation of European supercomputing ecosystem. EUPEX aims to directly support an emerging and vibrant European entrepreneurial ecosystem in AI and Big Data processing that will leverage HPC as a main enabling technology.
The project has the following objectives:
1. Co-design a modular Exascale-pilot system. A set of key applications has been selected to identify the requirements that the pilot’s hardware and software must address.
2. Build and deploy a pilot hardware and software platform integrating European technology. The SiPearl Rhea chip, the Modular Supercomputing Architecture (MSA), and Bull SequanaX will be used as the basis of a system in which all hardware and software components will be selected whenever possible from technologies developed in Europe.
3. Demonstrate the readiness and the scalability of the pilot technology in general and the MSA in particular, towards Exascale. The pilot system will not be Exaflop capable itself, but its capabilities to scale to this level will be determined. Hardware and software readiness shall enable a Go-to-Market path and optimize our chances to have a major part of these European IPs and outcomes be globally competitive and be used in main European systems by Horizon 2024.
4. Prepare applications and European users to efficiently exploit the future Exascale machines. The co-design applications will be adapted and optimized to efficiently exploit the capabilities and modularity of Exascale-ready systems. Access to the pilot platform will also be offered to external developers, e.g. CoEs, enlarge the portfolio of Exascale-ready applications and enable the acceptance by EU users of the underlying technologies, needed for Exascale systems.
