Architecting the Future: Building an ARM-powered HPC Ecosystem

Europe’s EUPEX Pilot project is focused on showcasing the continent’s ability to develop fully sovereign ARM-based supercomputers from chip to software. High Performance Computing (HPC) has emerged as a crucial element in various sectors, ranging from climate modeling to drug discovery. The demand for powerful, efficient, and scalable HPC infrastructures has become a strategic necessity.

In response to the increasing importance of HPC, the EUPEX project, funded by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, aims to create a pilot supercomputing platform entirely based on European technologies. This platform will utilize ARM-based processors designed to meet the performance and energy efficiency requirements of next-generation HPC systems.

The EUPEX Pilot project brings together leading European research centers, technology providers, and industrial partners to pave the way for the next era of European supercomputers. The consortium includes organizations such as Forschungszentrum Jülich, CEA, GENCI, and E4 Computer Engineering, among others.

The EUPEX Pilot System is designed to showcase a fully European HPC platform that meets the needs of current and future scientific applications. It aims to design the hardware architecture of the Pilot platform to enable the integration of diverse technologies in a flexible and scalable environment. The system will deploy an ARM-based Pilot production-class platform for early testing by the European scientific community.

One key component of the Pilot System is the General-Purpose Processing (GPP) module, integrated into a GPP blade developed within the EUPEX project. This blade utilizes the BXI (Bull eXascale Interconnect) for efficient communication between nodes. The Pilot System also incorporates the BullSequana XH3000 rack developed by Eviden, equipped with liquid cooling for energy efficiency.

On the software side, the system uses ParaStation Modulo from ParTec and OCEAN from CEA to support large-scale distributed-memory HPC systems. The EUPEX project focuses on developing a software environment aligned with European technologies and practices to ensure software independence and security.

The EUPEX project emphasizes knowledge sharing with the European HPC community through webinars, workshops, and hands-on tutorials. The project’s Early Access Programme grants selected organizations access to a Grace-based partition for porting, testing, and optimizing applications in advance.

In conclusion, the EUPEX Pilot project represents a significant step towards establishing a fully European, ARM-based supercomputing stack. It supports technological sovereignty and the adoption of next-generation ARM architectures in large-scale European HPC systems. The project has received funding from the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.