Created by Philippe Notton in June 2019, SiPearl is the company bringing to life the European Processor Initiative (EPI) project. The aim of EPI is to foster the deployment in Europe of high-performance and energy-efficient processor technologies. Privately held, SiPearl is supported by the European Union.
SiPearl is designing and will bring to market European processors that will help Europe’s supercomputers to achieve exascale(*) power. The company works in close collaboration with its 27 partners from 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 as a European company, 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 microprocessor, Rhea.
Under the terms of this license agreement, SiPearl benefits from the high-performance, scalable and secure Arm Neoverse V1 platform as well as the robust software and hardware ecosystem of the global supplier of semiconductor technologies.
The Arm Neoverse V1 platform gives SiPearl the means to design the European Rhea1 processor with a high degree of reliability, so that it offers high computing power and high energy efficiency.
With this new R&D centre, SiPearl 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.
Investors are:
The financing includes up to €25m in convertible debt from the European Investment Bank (EIB).
SiPearl wins an emblematic contract to equip the first Exascale supercomputer in Europe. Named JUPITER, this EuroHPC JU supercomputing infrastructure will be operated by Forschungszentrum Jülich.
It will be built by a consortium composed of Eviden (the Atos Group business leading in advanced computing) and ParTec (the German modular supercomputing company). The expected budget is €273m.
This €15m second round of financing was subscribed by:
It includes a €8m loan syndicated by Caisse d’Epargne Rhône Alpes.
To open its R&D centre in Italy, SiPearl chose Bologna, at the heart of a leading region in supercomputing and AI, with the University of Bologna, Cineca -Italy’s largest supercomputing centre-, and ECMWF.
Matteo Tonelli, previously responsible for external relations and partnerships at ANRT, is Country Manager for Italy.
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 €17.5m: €2.5m grants and €15m equity subscribed by EIC Fund.
SiPearl has established key partnerships with leading IP providers. Our company is the only European licensee to use ARM Neoverse V1 platform and benefits 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: Eviden, the next-gen technology leader in data-driven, trusted and sustainable digital transformation, and HPE, the global leader
To best meet the expectations of its end-users, SiPearl collaborates with AMD for its Instinct™ accelerators and Intel for Ponte Vecchio GPU family and NVIDIA for its accelerated computing and networking portfolio.
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, France Deeptech, the community which gathers together actors in deeptech and Teratec, the European competence center for high-performance digital simulation. SiPearl is also a member of Systematic, the European Deeptech cluster, JEDI Foundation, European funding agency, PlayFrance.digital, collective which brings together more than 300 French digital players, 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, GSA, organization dedicated to semiconductors, and 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, etc.).
In September 2024, SiPearl France published its first carbon assessment as part of Diagnostic Décarbon’Action. It amounts to 7,816t CO2e, or 60t CO2e par employee (based on 130 employees in France as of December 31, 2023).
