“We’re looking for innovative processor designs orientated to high performance computing, which is important to European industry,” said Dr Sandro D’Elia of the Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology of the European Commission.
The Horizon 2020 programme’s ‘ICT-05-2017: Customised and low energy computing’ call will not impose specific technical solutions but will ask for a working prototype – actual chip, software simulator, hybrid hardware-software demonstrator or other – to be demonstrated before the end of the project.
“The European Commission wants Europe to avail of a new family of processors with a significantly better energy/performance ratio compared to current offerings, specifically tailored for high performance, low power server-side applications,’ Dr D’Elia summarised.
According to the Commission, this is a step towards tomorrow's supercomputers, but is also meant to support all the applications where high performance must be coupled with low energy consumption, and criteria like efficiency and space are relevant. It is hoped that the design will also include hardware-based security features.
