Our ecosystem

On January 4, 2022, one year after the French President announced the National Quantum Plan, Neil Abroug, the coordinator of the national strategy launched HQI: France Hybrid HPC Quantum Initiative.HQI is an integrated initiative that combines a hybrid computing platform coupling several quantum technologies to GENCI's Joliot Curie supercomputer at the TGCC (CEA), and a program of research - academic and industrial, and dissemination of uses.

This quantum/HPC hybridization is an innovative and unique initiative, which will benefit from the recognized expertise of CEA/TGCC (Très Grand Centre de Calcul) teams in infrastructure operation, security and support for scientists.

The HQI initiative aims to serve the needs of French and European academic and industrial researchers, wanting to evaluate free of charge on a public infrastructure the potential of quantum computing for their applications as well as to develop international collaborations to foster open research.

GENCI is contributing to Work Packages 1 and 2 and piloting Work Package 3 of the HQI program

For more information on HQI: https://www.hqi.fr/

The European HPCQS project aims to integrate and couple two quantum simulators capable of controlling over 100 qubits, with two so-called tier0 European supercomputers. It also aims to deploy an open European federated infrastructure that will provide non-commercial cloud access to European public and private users. Finally, the project aims to develop a hybrid programming platform to combine quantum simulations with classical high-performance computing and thus accelerate the computational speed of classical supercomputers.

For more information on HPCQS: https://www.hpcqs.eu/

The "CLUSSTER" project aims to strengthen a sovereign French and European cloud industry by creating a single entry point for the entire French academic and industrial community to a set of sovereign infrastructures and services. The first services will be launched in 2024 for the artificial intelligence (AI) community, and later extended to quantum and high-performance computing (HPC). CLUSSTER is a project funded under the Plans d'Investissement d'Avenir 2030 (Future Investment Plans 2030), led by a consortium made up of French players from the world of academic and industrial research in digital computing and AI: GENCI, CEA, CNRS and Inria, as well as industrialists Eviden, OVHcloud, CS Group, ActiveEon and startup Qarnot.

The European Processor Initiative (EPI) aims to design and implement a roadmap for a new family of low-power European processors for large-scale computing, high-performance Big-Data and a whole range of emerging applications. Following on from the 1st part of the EPI project known as SGA1, Europe is continuing its support for the definition of the second generation of the European processor and its gas pedal by committing €70 million in funding to the EPI SGA2 project, which started in February 2022 and will run for 3 years.

EPI-SGA2 is in line with the vision of the European Semiconductor Regulation in response to a need for sovereignty in processor supply by bringing back to Europe the systematic value chain and know-how to equip future European systems, including in particular that of the Exascale project for which France is bidding. The level of effort is unprecedented, and builds on the fertile ground laid by 10 years of effort, initiated with the MontBlanc family of projects.

For more information on EPI: https://www.european-processor-initiative.eu/project/epi/

The EUPEX project, EUropean Pilot for EXascale, starting in early 2022, is part of the vision to develop sovereign technologies that can equip future European Exascale architectures. Co-funded by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, as well as France (via Bpifrance), Germany, Italy, Greece, the Czech Republic and Croatia, it has a budget of €40.8 million over 4 years, and brings together industry and academia (including Atos, CEA, Inria, GENCI and the SME CybeleTech in France). EUPEX aims to deploy and validate the first pilot systems for HPC integrating European technologies, in particular the processor from the EPI project and software layers. With this in mind, the RHEA processor designed by European company SiPearl is expected to be integrated in its most advanced version.

For more information on the Eupex project: https://eupex.eu/

The EuroQCS-France consortium is led by GENCI as host entity and CEA as host site, with the Polytechnic University of Bucharest (UPB, Romania), Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ, Germany) and the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC, Ireland) as members.

This consortium aims to enable the EuroHPC joint venture to acquire a photonic quantum computer, which will be installed at the TGCC and coupled to the Joliot Curie supercomputer, following the example of the 100-qubit Pasqal quantum simulator acquired as part of the HPCQS project.

The members of this consortium share the desire to promote the principles expressed in the white paper EuroQCS - European Quantum Computing & Simulation Infrastructure - of the Quantum Flagship. This manifesto aims to encourage the creation of a federated HPC+Quantum infrastructure and related services:
- Expose as many complementary quantum computing and simulation hardware as possible in a pan-European HPC-QC infrastructure;
- Foster integration and hybridization between HPC and Quantum;
- Shape the ecosystem by creating synergies within the EuroQCS developer community, supporting users and attracting new ones.

EuroQCS-France also contributes to the EuroQCS joint effort, around various topics such as electromagnetic simulation, structural mechanics, engine combustion, materials simulation, meteorology and earth observation.

For more information on EuroQCS France: https://www.hqi.fr/medias/EN/EuroQCS_Communication_Breve-HQI_EN.pdf