There are some unique developments afoot at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), which stands to reason for the only HPC site to be housed in a former church.
The site will be home to the world’s first RISC-V-based supercomputer, a collaboration underpinned by commercial RISC-V company, SiFive, whom we talked to last week (and which may be in Intel’s acquisition sights). Another RISC-V company has entered the BSC, European Processor Initiative arena.
Cortus, a French semiconductor maker focused on embedded, low power processors, is also poised to stake a claim in the very early days of RISC-V in HPC, although they’ve not managed to get a manufacturable product in line before others who are slated for the RISC-V based BSC exascale system set to appear sometime before 2024, assuming funding holds.