Atos unit, ParTec sign deal for Europe's first Exascale supercomputer

Partec AG

04/10/2023 16:01

Oct 4 (Reuters) - A Franco-German consortium said on
Wednesday it had signed a deal to provide Europe's first
Exascale supercomputer, as the region tries to catch up with the
United States in next-generation computing.
    The consortium, comprising Germany's ParTec  JY0n.DE  and
unit of France's Atos  ATOS.PA , said it had struck the deal
with EuroHPC, a joint venture between the EU, European countries
and private firms aimed at promoting supercomputing in Europe. 
    Supercomputers are vastly more powerful than traditional
ones, and an Exascale supercomputer can perform one quintillion
- or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 - calculations per second.
    The 500 million euro ($524 million) deal will see the
consortium provide a supercomputer, called JUPITER, for the
German Jülich Supercomputing Centre. 
    "JUPITER will have three times the computing capability of
Europe’s current most powerful supercomputer", the consortium
said, adding it would require the space of about four tennis
courts.
    ($1 = 0.9537 euros)

 (Reporting by Gaëlle Sheehan
Editing by Mark Potter)
 ((gaelle.sheehan@thomsonreuters.com; +48 58 7785110;))