Barcelona Supercomputing Center heads European chip development

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - National Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS) will lead the development of the European chip up to 2021. The project, boosted by the European Commission, will be managed by the Barcelona center and will receive 240 million euros from European funds, even though the work plan foresees an initial investment of 120 million euros.   

The BSC-CNS will not only work on the development of the chip, which aims to prevent Europe from using the chip produced abroad, but also to analyse its implementation in European industry. The project aims to boost European technological and industrial competitiveness given the growing global competitiveness in the technological field.

The lack of a European chip, a “weakness” for the EU

According to the EC, one of the obstacles of developing an ambitious high-performance European computer system is precisely the lack of a European chip. Thus, the European computer community finds three main "weaknesses": the development and commercialization of domestic chips, processor technologies and computer systems.

Technology, a "strategic field for the EU's future"

The consortium comprising the BSC-CNS is part of the European high performance computing project EuroHPC, which the European Commission considers to be "strategy for the EU's future".

With this big project, the EU wants to avoid falling behind other countries that have already "announced very ambitious plans" in this field, such as the United States, Japan, China or India.