In collaboration with its industrial and academic partners and research institutes, SiPearl takes part in several iconic projects contributing to the renewal of high-performance and low-power processor technologies in Europe. Among them: European Processor Initiative (EPI) Phase 2, Excellerat, MAX, OpenCube, Riser, Emopass, HIGHER, ODISSEE, etc.
European projects
EPI Phase 2, a more powerful and efficient processor
Launched by the Euro-HPC Joint Undertaking in January 2022, the European Processor Initiative Phase 2 aims to:
- strengthen the competitiveness and leadership of European industry and science;
- develop European processor technology with drastically better performance and power ratios;
- tackle important segments of broader and/or emerging HPC and big-data markets.
In particular, it will move forward with the development of the European processor targeting future European exascale supercomputers by applying technological enhancements to the baseline of Rhea. With its partners, SiPearl will increase the number of cores and memory bandwidth, and also add chip acceleration and custom IP blocks.
In parallel, the partners focus on the development of an open common platform standard aiming to efficiently interface processors and accelerators in-package, implementing cache coherency, and validating the toolchains and runtime between processors and accelerators.
Our partners
Our partners of EPI Phase 2 are: Eviden, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Semidynamics, CEA, Chalmers University of Technology, ETH Zürich, Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), GENCI, Técnico Lisboa, Jülich Forschungszentrum, Università di Bologna, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (FER), Fraunhofer, ST, E4 Computer Engineering, Universtà di Pisa, SURF, Kalray, Extoll, CINECA, ProvenRun, Karlsruher Institute of Technology (KIT), Menta, Kernkonzept, Leonardo and Zeropoint Technology.
AERO, an essential addition to the EPI project
Funded by the European Union, the AERO project complements the efforts of the EPI project by focusing on the development of an open source software ecosystem needed to optimise the efficiency of EPI hardware and facilitate the integration of processors in the cloud. The aim is to promote innovation, facilitate the adoption of these advanced technologies in cloud computing, and strengthen Europe’s competitiveness in this field.
Our partners
Our partners are: Université de Genève, Codeplay, Manchester University, Ubitech, Pierer Innovation, Red Hat, Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), Virtual Open Systems, Università di Pisa and Sednai.
This project started in January 2023 and is scheduled for completion in June 2026.
Excellerat, the European Centre of Excellence for Engineering application
The Excellerat collaborative project aims at making some of the most used HPC application suites in Engineering and Manufacturing work on the EuroHPC supercomputers scale at exa level (millions of cores, workflows, sataflows) based on the Rhea processor.
SiPearl will apply in the proven EPI co-design methodology on energy aspects and for the design of low level memory profiling tools. It will also port and optimise top HPC applications from the Engineering and Manufacturing sector.
Our partners
Our partners are: Uni Stuttgart, RWTH Aachen, CERFACS, Teratec, CINECA, ARCTUR, KTH – Royal Institute of Technology, SICOS, Fraunhofer, SSC Services, Uni Roma – La Sapienza and Université de Lorraine.
A EuroHPC project
Funded by EuroHPC Joint Undertaking together with national authorities, this project started in January 2023 and is scheduled for completion in December 2026.
Helios, a project awarded by EIC Accelerator
For this project, SiPearl has been awarded the European Innovation Council’s Accelerator programme (EIC Accelerator) in December 2021. It aims to develop a next-generation platform that will reduce the development time and cost of processor design.
Launched in July 2022, this project is scheduled for completion in September 2026.
MAX, materials design at the Exascale era
MAX is a European Centre of Excellence which enables materials modelling, simulations, discovery and design at the frontiers of the current and future HPC, High Throughput Computing (HTC) and data analytics technologies.
It targets to develop these technologies and make them accessible to a vast community of researchers working in the field of materials. MAX aims to facilitate the use of these technologies to support and accelerate research advances in this fast-growing field.
Our partners
CINECA, Consiglio Nazionale delle richerche (CNR), Quantum Espresso, Eviden, Unimore, Jülich, SISSA, Yambo, CEA, Leonardo, ICN2, Universitat Bremen, IT4I, Jožef Stefan Institute, CSIC, and Big DFT are our partners on this project.
A EuroHPC project
Funded by EuroHPC Joint Undertaking together with national authorities, this project started in January 2023 and is scheduled for completion in December 2026.
OpenCUBE, a cloud computing solution to be deployed on European infrastructure
This project proposes to design OpenCUBE, a full-stack solution of a validated European Cloud computing blueprint to be deployed on European hardware infrastructure. OpenCUBE will develop a custom cloud installation with the guarantee that an entirely European solution like SiPearl processors and Semidynamics RISC-V accelerators can be deployed reproducibly. It will provide a solid basis for the European cloud services, research, and commercial deployments envisioned to be core for federated digital services via Gaia-X. To remain competitive for the European Green Deal, OpenCUBE is designed to make energy awareness a core feature at all levels of the stack.
Our partners
Ours partners are: TUM, KTH – Royal Institute of Technology, Semidynamics, ECMWF and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
Funded by Horizon Europe programme, the OpenCUBE project launched in January 2023 is scheduled for completion in December 2026.
Plasma-PEPSC, the EuroHPC Centre of Excellence for Plasma Simulations
Plasma-PEPSC is a EuroHPC centre of excellence dedicated to plasma science, focusing on several key areas such as magnetic confinement fusion, industrial plasmas, medical applications… The aim of this centre is to promote scientific and technological progress in these specific areas by providing support, resources and collaboration to researchers and research teams.
Our partners
Our partners are: FORTH, KTH, University of Ljublijana, HZDR, University of Helsinki, Max Planck Gesellchaft and TUM.
Started in January 2023, the Plasma-PEPSC project is scheduled for completion in December 2026.
Riser, first all-European Risc-V cloud server infrastructure
Riser will develop the first all-European Risc-V cloud server infrastructure, significantly enhancing Europe’s open strategic autonomy. Riser will leverage and validate open hardware high-speed interfaces combined with a fully-featured operating system environment and runtime system, enabling the integration of low-power components, including Risc-V processor chips from the EPI and Eupilot projects, in a new energy-efficient cloud architecture.
Our partners
Our partners are: Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), project coordinator, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, CloudSigma AG, Exapsys, Extoll and Semidynamics.
A Horizon Europe 2027 project
Funded by Horizon Europe 2027, this project started in January 2023 and is scheduled for completion in December 2026.
HIGHER, European Heterogeneous Cloud/Edge Infrastructures for Next Generation Hybrid Services
HIGHER aims to develop and validate European modules, technologies and complete systems for cloud and edge computing, developed on the basis of open standard architectures (OCP), combined with new open-source runtime software stacks, capable of supporting efficient services and applications for cloud and edge computing.
Our partners
The consortium is composed of SiPearl, Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), Exapsys, Semidynamics, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, CloudSigma AG, Rise Research Institute of Sweden (Rise), KTH, Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS) and 2CRSI.
This collaborative project is funded by Horizon Europe. It will last 36 months and is scheduled for completion in December 2027.
ODISSEE, solutions for processing massive flood of scientific data on the fly using AI and frugal, flexible algorithms
Flagship physical science infrastructures, such as CERN’s HL-LHC et the SKA Observatory (SKAO) generate massive quantities of raw data (1018 bytes). However, while this flood of data paves the way for major scientific breakthroughs, it also poses a crucial challenge: as current digital technologies are unable to process it, major discoveries could go unnoticed.
The objective of ODISSEE is to meet the needs of the HL-LHC scientific communities at CERN and SKAO by processing data on the fly using AI and frugal, flexible algorithms. To demonstrate the effectiveness of these new technologies, ODISSEE will work on specifiying a pilot combining the use of both SKAO and HL-LHC: the search for the nature of dark matter.
Our partners
SiPearl is partner of this project coordinated by Observatoire de Paris with CNRS Terre & Univers, CERN Openlab, SKAO, Inria, Slices RI, Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Simula, Surf, Genci, EAS, NextSilicon, Neovia Innovation, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL and Swiss National Supercomputing Centre.
This collaborative project is funded by Horizon Europe. It will last 36 months and is scheduled for completion in December 2027.
National projects
Emopass, to optimise the performance and efficiency of the European processor
The Emopass project intends to build the basis of a software ecosystem that will optimise the performance and energy consumption of Rhea for HPC applications such as artificial intelligence, meteorological, climatic, seismic, medical and pharmaceutical modelling.
SiPearl is working hand in hand with Eviden and the Laboratory of Parallelism and Distributed Algorithm Networks (LI-PaRAD) of the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines on this project. The Emopass project is supported by the Ile-de-France Region and Bpifrance.
Our partners
The project is carried out in cooperation with Eviden, UVSQ – Université Paris Saclay with the support of Bpifrance, Région Ile-de-France
Download the “Charte Régionale des Valeurs de la République et de la Laïcité“
Microlab, to create a state-of-the-art laboratory specialised in processor system validation
The purpose of Microlab project is to research, design, and implement a state-of-the-art R&D system validation laboratory in Catalonia (Spain), specialising in the functional, energy, and interoperability validation of high-performance and energy-efficient processors, as well as advanced computing systems (compute nodes), aimed at supercomputing and artificial intelligence applications.
This laboratory will be key to consolidating SiPearl’s presence in Spain and providing industrial continuity to the results of strategic European projects where our teams are already participating such as the European Processor Initiative (EPI), cloud projects such as HIGHER, RISER, AERO, and OpenCube.
This project has been awarded by the national authorities of Spain (ICEX). It started in July 2025 and will run until December 2026.