Barcelona / Tokyo, November 14, 2024 – Openchip, NEC and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center are exploring a collaboration to develop Openchip’s new vector computing accelerator, designed for high-performance computing data centers. This partnership will mark a significant milestone in the global supercomputing industry.
Openchip is a Spanish silicon engineering company that has received a grant funded by the European Union under the Next Generation EU plan, supported by the EU and the Spanish government through the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan. The company’s mission is to develop System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions based on the RISC-V architecture, integrated with artificial intelligence accelerator chiplets.
These processors are designed to optimize computing workloads and accelerate scientific research in fields such as genomic computing, personalized medicine, weather forecasting, engineering simulations, protein design for new drugs and vaccines, astrophysics, and more. The vector computing processors will benefit from the design expertise of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, combined with NEC’s more than thirty years of leadership in supercomputing architectures, including its renowned SX Series of vector supercomputers.
NEC, drawing on its extensive experience, will provide technical support for Openchip’s vector computing processor.
Kondo Masaki, Senior Director of HPC at NEC, stated:
“We are pleased to join forces with Openchip, a promising company in the chip industry, and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, a globally recognized center for research and innovation. Our ambition is to remain a global leader in supercomputing, serving the growing demands of high-performance workloads such as advanced simulations, forecasting, genomic computing, large language models, and more. We strive to contribute to society by supporting progress in science and research.”
Mateo Valero, Director of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, commented:
“We are witnessing a historic moment in the tech industry, where supercomputing data centers are becoming a critical component of social progress. Supercomputing workloads are evolving rapidly, with major impacts across various scientific and research disciplines. The surging demand for artificial intelligence highlights the need for significant innovation in computing technologies, and we are proud to support the ambition of Openchip and NEC to design the next generation of vector computing processors.”
Francesc Guim Bernat, CEO of Openchip, added:
“This collaboration demonstrates the potential of RISC-V–based chips to meet the demanding needs of artificial intelligence and supercomputing. It highlights the advantages of a more flexible and open value chain for chip design and production. We recognize NEC as an undisputed global leader in supercomputing, and we are proud to enter this strategic collaboration, which further strengthens our partnership with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. This agreement reflects our shared commitment to collaboration, openness, and trust in support of the European Union’s digital sovereignty—fostering a more resilient semiconductor value chain that will ultimately benefit the global technology industry.”