SiPearl Delivers the First Rhea1 CPUs to Bull for Integration into JUPITER, Europe’s Fastest Operating Supercomputer

SiPearl, a fabless designer of European high-performance energy-efficient CPUs built for sovereign supercomputing, AI and data centre, has delivered the first samples of Rhea1 to Bull, a leader in advanced computing and AI.This turning point marks a major milestone. It illustrates Europe’s success in asserting its technological sovereignty in advanced computing and AI, as Rhea1 will become the first European-designed CPU deployed in a European-built platform. 

Bull has begun integration of Rhea 1 onto its BullSequana XH3000 platform for JUPITER, Europe’s first exascale HPC. Procured by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, JUPITER is hosted at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. This milestone will contribute to the development of JUPITER’s CPU blade, complementary to the GPU partition, paving the way for the full modular integration of the machine.

Most complex server CPU ever designed in Europe, Rhea1 includes in a single package 80 Arm Neoverse V1 cores – each with 2 x 256-bit Scalable Vector Extension -, 4 stacks of HBM and 4 DDR5 interfaces. Thanks to these key features, Rhea1 is ideally suited to the most demanding HPC workloads whilst offering back-door free and kill switch free security, energy-efficiency and flexibility. During the ongoing benchmarking phases at SiPearl’s laboratories, Rhea1 is delivering very encouraging performance: the early data is strong, and in some cases, performance is exceeding expectations. The performance figures, which are still to be consolidated, will be published this autumn. The equipment supplied for JUPITER represents SiPearl’s first order for Rhea1 and therefore constitutes its first significant revenue.

From dramatically improving extreme weather forecasts to accelerating breakthroughs in climate science, sustainable energy, AI, quantum research, and structural biology, JUPITER will empower researchers, industries, public organisations across Europe to drive innovation at an unprecedented scale.

“The delivery of the first Rhea1 CPUs marks an important milestone for Europe’s supercomputing sovereignty. Through the European Processor Initiative, EuroHPC JU has supported the development of a European processor that is now moving from innovation to deployment in JUPITER, Europe’s first exascale HPC. This achievement demonstrates what Europe can accomplish by bringing together research, industry and world-class infrastructure to build a stronger European HPC ecosystem,” said Anders Dam Jensen, executive director, EuroHPC JU.

“Rhea1 plays an important role in JUPITER’s Cluster Module, complementing the GPU-based Booster with a CPU-based architecture designed for a broad range of complex and data-intensive workloads. Its high memory bandwidth is particularly well suited to applications that benefit from efficient access to large amounts of data. Bringing this European processor technology into JUPITER is an important step in making these capabilities available to the scientific community,” said Prof. Dr. Thomas Lippert, director, Jülich Supercomputing Centre, Forschungszentrum Jülich.

“This key milestone is the result of a long-term and strategic collaboration between two European tech players, federating a stronger HPC and AI ecosystem. With the arrival of the first Rhea1 CPUs and their integration into our BullSequana XH supercomputing platform, our ambition is becoming reality. Integrating a European processor onto a European platform for Europe’s flagship exascale system is a milestone we can all be proud of, and a powerful demonstration of what we can achieve together when vision is matched with execution. Thank you EuroHPC JU and Forschungszentrum Jülich for trusting us,” said Bruno Lecointe, head, HPC, AI and Quantum, Bull.

“Together with Bull, our long-standing partner, we are taking a major step towards Europe’s digital sovereignty by equipping the CPU cluster of the European exascale HPC JUPITER with European hardware. This will be a first in Europe. I am very proud of this, as it is also a wonderful human endeavour in which teams from SiPearl, Bull, Forschungszentrum Jülich and all our European partners have worked together to ensure the success of this ambitious project, with the unwavering support of EuroHPC JU and the European authorities,” said Philippe Notton, CEO and founder, SiPearl.