New Call to Procure the European Exascale Supercomputer, Alice Recoque

The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking seeks to procure a second European exascale system. It will be named Alice Recoque, in honour to a French computer scientist pioneer, and will be capable of performing over one billion billion calculations per second. This next-generation supercomputer is another significant technological milestone for Europe. The Alice Recoque supercomputer will tackle Europe's most pressing societal, scientific and industrial challenges by integrating large-scale numerical simulations, extensive data analysis, and artificial intelligence (AI).

The Alice Recoque supercomputer will have a state-of-the-art, energy-efficient architecture that includes multiple computing, pre/post-processing, and service partitions. These partitions will be linked up by a high-speed internal interconnect, and allow shared access to a tiered data-centric storage architecture. It will be managed by a unified system administration and resource management stack.

The deadline to submit a request to participate in this procurement process is 30 October 2024, 17:00 CET.

Following this deadline, the EuroHPC JU will review the submissions and initiate a competitive dialogue. This process will allow EuroHPC JU, as the contracting authority, to engage in detailed discussions with selected candidates. Through these discussions, EuroHPC JU will thoroughly evaluate the market's technical offerings and select the most suitable solutions. 

Upon completion of the dialogue phase, the candidates will be invited to submit a tender. The EuroHPC JU will evaluate these tenders, select the best offer and conclude a contract with the chosen provider to acquire, deliver, install and maintain this new EuroHPC supercomputer. 

The technological solutions to be procured are expected to outperform existing solutions regarding several of the following aspects: 

• Performance/TCO; 
• Programmability and usability; 
 
• Versatility; 
• System stability; 
• Power and energy efficiency; 
• Computing density.   

More details

The Alice Recoque supercomputer will be hosted and operated by the Jules Verne consortium, led by France through GENCI and CEA, with the participation of the Netherlands through SURF. GENCI, as Hosting Entity, will manage this new EuroHPC supercomputer, which will be located and operated at CEA’s supercomputing center TGCC (Très Grand Centre de calcul du CEA) in Bruyères-le-Châtel, France as Hosting Site.

The estimated total value for the call is EUR 354 800 000. The EuroHPC JU will fund 50% of the total cost of the new supercomputer, with budget stemming from the Digital Europe Programme (DEP). The other 50% will be funded by France and the Netherlands.

This system will be available to serve a wide range of European researchers from academia and industry as well as public services. Access to the computing resources of the new machine will be jointly managed by the EuroHPC JU and the Jules Verne consortium in proportion to their investments. 

More details can be found on this dedicated webpage of the EU Funding & Tenders portal.

Background

In June 2024, the EuroHPC JU announced the signature of a hosting agreement with GENCI. GENCI has been selected as a EuroHPC JU hosting entity as a result of a call for expression of interest launched in December 2022.

The EuroHPC JU is a legal and funding entity, created in 2018 and reviewed in 2021 by Council Regulation (EU) 2021/1173. This was recently amended in 2024 by means of Council Regulation (EU) 2024/1732, with the mission to:   

• develop, deploy, extend and maintain in the EU a world-leading federated, secure and hyper-connected supercomputing, quantum computing, service and data infrastructure ecosystem;   
• support the development and uptake of demand-oriented and user-driven innovative and competitive supercomputing system based on a supply chain that will ensure components, technologies and knowledge limiting the risk of disruptions and the development of a wide range of applications optimised for these systems;   
• widen the use of that supercomputing infrastructure to a large number of public and private users and support the development of key HPC skills for European science and industry.   
• develop and operate AI Factories located around EuroHPC supercomputing facilities to support the growth of a highly competitive and innovative AI ecosystem in Europe.  

In order to equip Europe with a world-leading supercomputing infrastructure, the EuroHPC JU has already procured nine supercomputers, located across Europe. Three of these EuroHPC supercomputers are now ranked among the world’s top 10 most powerful supercomputers: LUMI in Finland, Leonardo in Italy and MareNostrum 5 in Spain. And JUPITER, the first European exascale system is currently under deployment in Germany and its first module named JEDI is ranked first place in the Green500 list of the most energy-efficient supercomputers worldwide.

No matter where in Europe they are located, European scientists and users from the public sector and industry can benefit from these EuroHPC supercomputers via the EuroHPC Access Calls to advance science and support the development of a wide range of applications with industrial, scientific and societal relevance for Europe.