Europe, including the Czech Republic, will develop its own processors for supercomputers

Europe has long been dependent on non-European hardware and software solutions for supercomputing, which threatens its sovereignty, economic stability, and technological competitiveness. The European Union has earmarked EUR 6 billion to support activities related to RISC-V, which is an open hardware architecture, much like open-source software. In the coming years, a fully European hardware and software ecosystem for supercomputing and artificial intelligence will be created with high-performance and energy-efficient processors and accelerators designed and developed exclusively in Europe. One of the key steps is launching the DARE project, the aim of which is to develop three different chiplets based on the RISC-V architecture. These chiplets are smaller specialised blocks that can then be used to build highly complex and powerful processors for next-generation supercomputers. The chiplets overcome the limitations of traditional monolithic chips through greater efficiency, scalability, and lower cost.

The Czech Republic will also contribute to strengthening digital sovereignty, specifically the Brno-based Codasip technology company, which will lead the development of a universal processor designed for highly complex computational tasks. Scientists from IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB – Technical University of Ostrava will also be involved in its development. “Primarily, we will be dealing with optimising power consumption and thermal management using the MERIC suite software, which we have been developing at our supercomputing centre for ten years. MERIC should also serve as a tool for monitoring power consumption and debugging hardware parameters of DARE chiplets,” explain Lubomír Říha from the Infrastructure Research Lab, who is the Principal Investigator of the project at IT4Innovations, and Ondřej Vysocký, Head of MERIC suite development.

“The Czech Republic's participation in this activity undeniably places us among the European technological leaders in IT. At the same time, we will have access to cutting-edge technologies already at the stage of their development, which will give us a certain technological advantage,” adds Vít Vondrák, Managing Director of IT4Innovations.

The DARE project, supported by the EuroHPC JU and coordinated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, brings together 38 leading partners from across Europe. At the end of its first phase, the project will lay the foundations for the first fully European supercomputer. For more information, visit the project website.

The DARE SGA1 project receives funding from the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 101202459. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme and Spain, Germany, Czechia, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Croatia, Portugal, Poland, Sweden, France and Austria. Funded by the European Union.