Digital Autonomy in Europe

The newly launched Digital Autonomy with RISC-V in Europe Specific Grant Agreement 1 project (DARE SGA 1) aims to increase European autonomy in high-performance computing (HPC) and AI by advancing open source technologies that will power future European supercomputers without having to rely on external input. In these times, it is crucial for Europe to build and maintain its own resources in this field. Developing homegrown computing solutions requires tight collaboration and co-design along the full stack from hardware to system software through HPC libraries and compilers to applications. The work of DARE is based on the open source RISC-V instruction set architecture for computer chips. The idea is for Europe to develop and produce its own RISC-V processors and accelerators for building future supercomputers, along with developing a complete, optimised, competitive and sustainable HPC/AI software stack for the DARE hardware.

PDC is participating in the DARE project ( www.pdc.kth.se/about/pdc-news/kth-pdc-partner-in-newly-launched-digital-autonomy-project-1.1391064 ) as one of the main developers of GROMACS, a widely used code for high-performance molecular dynamic simulations. The project started several months ago, but the collaborative work is already in full swing. Along with partners from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Tampere University, Chalmers University of Technology and the CSC – IT Center for Science, PDC is working on the co-development of SYCL runtimes and compilers for targeting RISC-V vector extensions. (The vector extensions in the RISC-V architecture provide a powerful way to perform parallel computations which enhance performance for tasks like scientific simulations and machine learning.) In addition, PDC is working with the EU-funded OpenCHIP company ( openchip.com ) on refining the desired hardware specifications to ensure that GROMACS will run efficiently on the new vector accelerator (known as VEC) that is being developed by DARE for HPC and AI.

For more information about the DARE SGA 1 project, see the project’s home page dare-riscv.eu  and the European Commission (EC) page about the project funding cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101202459 .