SiPearl is working with AMD on GPU support for Arm HPC chip • The Register

Chip designer SiPearl is working with AMD on software support to enable supercomputing systems that couple SiPearl’s high-performance Rhea processor with AMD’s Instinct GPU accelerators.

SiPearl is the company involved in the European Processor Initiative (EPI) to develop an Arm-based processor for a European-designed and built exascale supercomputer planned for 2023.

This latest agreement sees the company enter into a commercial collaboration with AMD to jointly bid for exascale supercomputing systems using their respective technologies.

AMD and SiPearl said they will first work on interoperability of AMD’s ROCm software stack to develop GPU-accelerated applications with SiPearl’s Rhea microprocessor. The goal is to ensure that there is a software ecosystem that provides such applications to run on any future supercomputer based on SiPearl CPUs combined with AMD Instinct GPUs.

This joint work will focus on porting and optimizing AMD’s Heterogeneous Interface for Portability (HIP), which is designed to allow developers to write portable code that targets both AMD and Nvidia GPUs, the duo said.

Additionally, AMD and SiPearl said they “will be working with OEMs that will adopt the Rhea microprocessor with AMD Instinct accelerators in their designs,” which simply means they will work with any hardware company considering this combination of silicon to be used to build an actual HPC system.

The two companies also said they hope to extend the joint work to European research institutions supporting research modeling tools that would allow developers to port and optimize their applications for any system with a SiPearl/AMD solution.

SiPearl seems to cover all the bases when it comes to GPU support; Earlier this year it announced a similar agreement with Nvidia to ensure software support for its GPUs to run on SiPearl’s Rhea processor, and last year it announced it was working with Intel to develop its Ponte Vecchio GPU and its oneAPI enable software stack in supercomputers using the Rhea processor.

SiPearl CEO and founder Philippe Notton claimed the new AMD deal would further enrich the company’s technology. “By providing greater choice for European supercomputer end-users, it will enable Europe to tackle the grand challenges of our time, such as artificial intelligence, climate modeling and medical research,” he said in a statement.

Brad McCredie, AMD Vice President for Data Center and Accelerated Processing, said, “AMD is excited to take a step further in the European ecosystem with SiPearl to jointly provide a clear path to meet exascale supercomputing needs in Europe. “

SiPearl’s Rhea processor, developed in collaboration with Atos, will feature 72 Arm Neoverse V1 cores and both high-bandwidth DDR5 and HBM2E memory interfaces. The processor should have been available this year, but it seems that the first chips to be manufactured by TSMC will appear in 2023. ®