The European Union prepares its own prototype CPU

As the UK prepares to officially leave the European Union this Friday (31st January), the European Processor Initiative (EPI) is priming the first prototype of its HPC processor designed for advanced computing applications.

The EPI was set up by the European Commission as part of the Framework Partnership Agreement, with an aim to produce a homegrown family of low power processors for extreme exascale computing, machine learning and emergency applications to used by the European Union.

The initial batch of the European Union’s new exascale supercomputers are due to be introduced in 2023, by this time, the U.S, China and even Japan are expected to have similar systems of their own up and running. However, according to The Next Platform, prototypes of the EPI’s processors are already on their way.

In a recent conversation between the EPI Chairman Jean-Marc Denis and The Next Platform, details of the new prototype EPI processors were outlined. Denis confirmed that they will be manufactured using TSMC 6nm EUV process and is expected to part of a larger 2.5D interposer-based package that will include HBM memory, PCIe 5.0 and have DDR links.

The prototype EPI processor will be based on the “Zeus” iteration of a custom ARM CPU designed for general-purpose tasks such as running the OS. Special-purpose chips incorporating a Titan named RISC-V EPI Accelerator (EPAC), will be equipped with Vector processing units and Stencil/Tensor accelerators for AI and machine learning tasks. EPAC will support every standard AI format from INT8 through FP64, as well as bfloat16. According to Denis.

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KitGuru says: The European Processor Initiative is forging ahead with plans to launch its own processor to power European Union extreme exascale computing by 2023. What do you guys think of this initiative to create its own CPU by the European Commission?

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