Alice Recoque will be the first exascale supercomputer in France and should strengthen Europe’s capacity for AI and scientific research. The system runs on new AMD chips and is being built by Eviden.
France is building its first exascale supercomputer: Alice Recoque. The system will have a peak power of more than one exaflop and will be powered by the latest AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct MI430X GPUs. Eviden, a brand of Atos, is responsible for building the system. The installation is under the leadership of the French GENCI and CEA, in collaboration with the European supercomputer organization EuroHPC JU.
AI-HPC Factory
The investment amounts to 544 million euros and is partly financed by the Digital Europe Program and the Jules Verne Consortium. In addition to France, the Netherlands, via SURF, and Greece, via GRNET, are also participating in the project.
Alice Recoque is designed as an AI-HPC factory and will support European researchers in challenges including climate modeling, healthcare and materials research. The system combines simulation, data analysis and AI and supports the development of European AI models.
Energy Efficiency
The supercomputer consists of 94 racks and aims for better performance and energy efficiency than other exascale systems. According to Eviden, the design uses 25 percent fewer racks and components, and consumes up to 50 percent less energy per GPU. Each GPU contains 432 GB of HBM4 memory and a bandwidth of 19.6 TB/s.
The whole is built on the BullSequana XH3500 architecture and uses BXI network technology from Eviden. A solution from DDN is integrated for storage. The system also supports real-time energy optimization via Eviden’s Argos software, and uses direct liquid cooling with hot water for all racks.
With Alice Recoque, Europe is strengthening its capacity in the field of advanced AI and high performance computing. At the same time, the system aligns with the objectives of digital sovereignty and sustainable energy use.