SiPearl is developing the high-performance, low-power microprocessor that will be the heart of European supercomputers essential to Europe’s technological sovereignty in strategic areas such as artificial intelligence, medical research, climate change mitigation, energy management.
Created by Philippe Notton in June 2019, SiPearl is the company bringing to life the European Processor Initiative (EPI) project. The top objective of the EPI is to foster the deployment in Europe of high-performance and low-power microprocessor technologies. Privately held, SiPearl is supported by the European Union. It is established in France, Germany and Spain.
SiPearl is designing and will bring to market the European microprocessor that will help Europe’s supercomputers to achieve exascale(*) power. It works to through close collaboration with its 27 partners from the EPI consortium – scientific community, supercomputing centres and leading names from the IT, electronics and automotive sectors – which are its stakeholders, future clients and end-users.
(*) : One billion billion calculations per second.
Created in June 2019, SiPearl moves into its operational phase with €7.4m funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under specific grant agreement no.826647.
The company launches the design of its first generation of microprocessor Rhea.
The agreement allows SiPearl to benefit from the high-performance, scalable and secure Arm Neoverse V1, as well as leverage the robust software and hardware Arm ecosystem.
Taking advantage of the Arm Neoverse V1 enables SiPearl to accelerate the design of Rhea and ensure outstanding reliability in terms of both computing power and energy efficiency.
Less than one year after is creation, SiPearl confirms it commitment to scale in Europe by opening its first international subsidiary, SiPearl GmbH, based in Duisburg, Germany
Frank Gorris, previously Digital Design Lead for several 3G to 5G system-on-chip (SoC) solutions with the Intel Group, heads it up.
SiPearl and Graphcore, the British maker of the Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU), announce a partnership agreement to combine the best of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing technologies.
This partnership will enable innovation in simulation and prediction essential in critical areas such as meteorology, climatology, epidemiology and energy management.
SiPearl opens its second international subsidiary in the capital of Catalonia. The company thus becomes closer to its partners in Southern Europe, including the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC).
Previously Strategic Project Manager at BSC, Anna Riverola is appointed as the head of SiPearl SL.
This partnership provides a joint offering for the first exascale supercomputers in Europe. It will offer European customers of the two companies the possibility to combine SiPearl’s high-performance and low-power microprocessor Rhea with Intel’s family of general-purpose GPU Ponte Vecchio obtaining a high-performance compute node.
To enable this combination, SiPearl plans to port and optimize oneAPI to the Rhea processor. This will increase developer productivity and workload performance by providing a single programming solution across the heterogenous compute node.
The two companies collaborate to provide a joint offering combining SiPearl HPC microprocessors with NVIDIA accelerated computing and networking portfolio.
NVIDIA and SiPearl will develop a proxy platform for porting activities and SVE workload analysis combining the strengths of their respective solutions.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and SiPearl will jointly develop an end-to-end supercomputing offering that combines HPE’s supercomputing solutions designed to meet next-generation requirements in performance and scale, and SiPearl’s upcoming Rhea microprocessor.
Additionnaly, the partnership will deliver joint solutions to HPE’s Center of Excellence (CoE) in Grenoble to enable local access to users to test and optimize their products for market.
At its “Scaling up with the European Innovation Council (EIC)” event in Paris, the EIC showcased SiPearl as the first major investment from the EIC Fund.
This investment of €15 million equity and €2.5 million grants will support the launch of the high performance and low power microprocessor for European exascale supercomputers. It is the first milestones of SiPearl’s €100M+ Series A.
(On the picture: Philippe Notton and Jean-David Malo, Director of the EIC)
SiPearl is collaborating with AMD to provide a joint offering for exascale supercomputing systems, combining SiPearl’s energy-efficient HPC microprocessor, Rhea, with AMD Instinct™ accelerators.
The two partners will build an optimized software solution that would strengthen the capabilities of a SiPearl microprocessor combined with an AMD InstinctTM accelerator.
Since its operational launch in January 2020, SiPearl has been financially supported by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 program. In December 2021, SiPearl was awarded the Accelerator program of the European Innovation Council (EIC) for a total of €17.5 M: €2.5 M in subsidies and €15 M investment by the EIC Fund.
SiPearl has established key partnerships with leading IP providers. Our company is the only European licensee to use ARM Neoverse V1 platform andbenefits from ARM robust software ecosystem. This partnership with the global semiconductor IP provider accelerates the design of a very high-end offering in terms of both computing power and energy efficiency.
SiPearl also selected Siemens Digital Industries Software for its Veloce Strato emulation platform, Ansys for validation of semiconductor power integrity and minimization of power consumption, Synopsys…
Manufacturing will initially be entrusted to the Taiwanese TSMC, first independant semiconductor foundry for an etching 6nm or better.
Sipearl has established two partnerships with two leader manufacturers.
To best meet the expectations of its end-users, SiPearl collaborates with:
SiPearl is a member of many technology consortiums, such as ANRT, which gathers public and private actors in research and development, France Digitale, the leading startup and investor association, and Teratec, the European competence center for high-performance digital simulation. SiPearl is also a member of Systematic, the European Deep Tech cluster, of JEDI Foundation, European funding agency, of PlayFrance.digital, collective which brings together more than 300 French digital players, of GIM, professional industrial organization of Ile-de-France and of Industrial Alliance on Processors and Semiconductor Technologie. The company is also a member of the ETP4HPC think tank dedicated to research and innovation in European high performance computing to further Europe’s competitiveness. It’s also a member of Minalogic, the digital technology cluster for France’s Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, of GSA, organization dedicated to semiconductors, and of GEBS, network which highlights company directors.
By giving Europe the means for early detection of diseases, to fight climate change more effectively, to produce better quality goods and services, the high-performance, low-power microprocessors developed by SiPearl will bring important environmental, social and societal benefits.
SiPearl’s progressive approach to sustainable growth includes promoting diversity in recruitment and taking steps to minimize the impact of its activities on the environment (hosting green servers at Ikoula, opening offices close to labor pools, limiting paper consumption).
SiPearl is committed to furthering its strategies for sustainable growth. More to follow.
