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On 5 September 2025, at the Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany, European leaders inaugurated JUPITER, the continent’s first exascale supercomputer. Chancellor Friedrich Merz described it as a “historic European pioneering project,” while EU Commissioner for Research and Innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva said “we are opening a new chapter for science, AI and innovation. JUPITER strengthens Europe’s digital sovereignty, accelerates discovery, and ensures that the most powerful and sustainable computing resources are available to our researchers, innovators, and industries.”
Energy-efficient, Jupiter has been designed with sustainability in mind and is one of the top five supercomputers worldwide. Its applications will span climate research, energy modelling, drug discovery and the training of large AI systems. For Henna Virkkunen, Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty at the European Commission, it will “pull Europe’s research community, its startups, its industry, and its talent together. It will attract investment, stimulate breakthroughs, and push Europe forward.” In short, this is a real opportunity to develop the European tech industry and begin to decouple the continent from an over-reliance on the United States and Asia in the sector.
A first step towards sovereignty
Indeed, at its core, Jupiter reflects Europe’s determination to compete in a field long dominated by the United States and China. The French company Eviden, a subsidiary of Athos Group, built Jupiter in Angers, thus demonstrating that Europe has the means to achieve its ambitions. Emmanuel Le Roux, SVP, Global Head of Advanced Computing, said “We are extremely proud to see Eviden-built systems again in the two first spots of the Green500 and JUPITER listed as the 4th most powerful AI supercomputer in the world. Having delivered JUPITER and its Modular Data Center in 9 months is a major achievement and we look forward to seeing it reach its full exascale capacity once fully operational”. But reaching the exascale threshold required pragmatism. The system’s Booster module, which provides the bulk of its computing power, is built on Nvidia Grace Hopper GH200 superchips. More than 24,000 of these cutting-edge processors drive Jupiter’s performance today (approximately 6000 compute nodes, each featuring four of Nvidia's GH200 Grace Hopper superchips, and interconnected using the GPU-flinger's Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking gear).
Leveraging American tech, especially Nvidia, in the first phase was crucial if Europe was to deliver an exascale system within the current timeframe. In that sense, Jupiter demonstrates both Europe’s ambition and its ability to integrate the best global technology while building toward greater autonomy. That autonomy will come in stages. The general-purpose CPU cluster, an essential complement to the GPU Booster, has not yet been deployed. It is in this partition that the next leap in sovereignty will take place. Beginning in 2026, it will run on Rhea1 processors, designed by the French company SiPearl.
Designing Europe’s processor future
Founded in 2019 under the European Processor Initiative, SiPearl is one of a small group of European tech innovators that have taken it upon themselves to restore Europe’s ability to design high-performance processors and minimise reliance on the big hitters in the sectors. This step is essential if Europe is to ride the storm of ongoing geopolitical instability and economic uncertainty. Tech sovereignty is now a strategic imperative. “Computing has become a fundamental asset today. Unfortunately, it has also become a potential source of conflict, export controls, etc. We are pleased to be at the forefront, providing Europe with a processor that offers a level of computing performance unique in Europe today,” explained CEO Philippe Notton. A vision that seems to appeal to Eviden, one of SiPearl's shareholders, for whom sovereignty makes sense.
In July 2025, the company announced it had taped out its first-generation chip, Rhea1, with production handed to TSMC in Taiwan on a 6-nanometre process. Samples are expected in early 2026, paving the way for integration into Jupiter’s CPU cluster later that year. Jupiter and its future developments owe much to a technology conceived in the 1980s, the transputer, developed by the British company Inmos. Each transputer had its own integrated memory and serial communication links to exchange data with other transputers, enabling many more simultaneous tasks to be generated.
The fact that the chip is designed in Europe but manufactured in Asia underlines both progress and remaining dependency. For now, Europe lacks the semiconductor fabrication facilities required for such advanced processors. But the design capability is back on the continent, and with it a degree of control over performance, architecture, and intellectual property. The integration of Rhea1 into JUPITER’s CPU cluster is the logical next step.
Sovereignty in motion
The duality of JUPITER’s development (reliance on old global supply chains, a future based on European processors) highlights the current situation in the European tech industry. But it also represents a real opportunity for Europe to take the lead in strategic direction. Sovereignty cannot be achieved overnight, it must be nurtured, step by step. The deployment of SiPearl’s Rhea1 – and subsequent generations beyond 3 mm – will mark a tangible shift in that direction. It is the reason why institutions like DG CONNECT and the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking invested in SiPearl from the beginning, and why Forschungszentrum Jülich has insisted on integrating European technology wherever possible.
In practical terms, Jupiter will enable European researchers to model climate change with unprecedented accuracy, test new materials for the energy transition, and train AI systems without depending exclusively on foreign infrastructure. In strategic terms, it signals that Europe is not content to remain a consumer of imported technology. The road is long. Full sovereignty in supercomputing would require not only processor design but also advanced fabrication capacity on European soil. Yet the inauguration of Jupiter, coupled with the promise of Rhea1 in 2026, shows that Europe is moving deliberately in that direction.
Energy-efficient, Jupiter has been designed with sustainability in mind and is one of the top five supercomputers worldwide. Its applications will span climate research, energy modelling, drug discovery and the training of large AI systems. For Henna Virkkunen, Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty at the European Commission, it will “pull Europe’s research community, its startups, its industry, and its talent together. It will attract investment, stimulate breakthroughs, and push Europe forward.” In short, this is a real opportunity to develop the European tech industry and begin to decouple the continent from an over-reliance on the United States and Asia in the sector.
A first step towards sovereignty
Indeed, at its core, Jupiter reflects Europe’s determination to compete in a field long dominated by the United States and China. The French company Eviden, a subsidiary of Athos Group, built Jupiter in Angers, thus demonstrating that Europe has the means to achieve its ambitions. Emmanuel Le Roux, SVP, Global Head of Advanced Computing, said “We are extremely proud to see Eviden-built systems again in the two first spots of the Green500 and JUPITER listed as the 4th most powerful AI supercomputer in the world. Having delivered JUPITER and its Modular Data Center in 9 months is a major achievement and we look forward to seeing it reach its full exascale capacity once fully operational”. But reaching the exascale threshold required pragmatism. The system’s Booster module, which provides the bulk of its computing power, is built on Nvidia Grace Hopper GH200 superchips. More than 24,000 of these cutting-edge processors drive Jupiter’s performance today (approximately 6000 compute nodes, each featuring four of Nvidia's GH200 Grace Hopper superchips, and interconnected using the GPU-flinger's Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking gear).
Leveraging American tech, especially Nvidia, in the first phase was crucial if Europe was to deliver an exascale system within the current timeframe. In that sense, Jupiter demonstrates both Europe’s ambition and its ability to integrate the best global technology while building toward greater autonomy. That autonomy will come in stages. The general-purpose CPU cluster, an essential complement to the GPU Booster, has not yet been deployed. It is in this partition that the next leap in sovereignty will take place. Beginning in 2026, it will run on Rhea1 processors, designed by the French company SiPearl.
Designing Europe’s processor future
Founded in 2019 under the European Processor Initiative, SiPearl is one of a small group of European tech innovators that have taken it upon themselves to restore Europe’s ability to design high-performance processors and minimise reliance on the big hitters in the sectors. This step is essential if Europe is to ride the storm of ongoing geopolitical instability and economic uncertainty. Tech sovereignty is now a strategic imperative. “Computing has become a fundamental asset today. Unfortunately, it has also become a potential source of conflict, export controls, etc. We are pleased to be at the forefront, providing Europe with a processor that offers a level of computing performance unique in Europe today,” explained CEO Philippe Notton. A vision that seems to appeal to Eviden, one of SiPearl's shareholders, for whom sovereignty makes sense.
In July 2025, the company announced it had taped out its first-generation chip, Rhea1, with production handed to TSMC in Taiwan on a 6-nanometre process. Samples are expected in early 2026, paving the way for integration into Jupiter’s CPU cluster later that year. Jupiter and its future developments owe much to a technology conceived in the 1980s, the transputer, developed by the British company Inmos. Each transputer had its own integrated memory and serial communication links to exchange data with other transputers, enabling many more simultaneous tasks to be generated.
The fact that the chip is designed in Europe but manufactured in Asia underlines both progress and remaining dependency. For now, Europe lacks the semiconductor fabrication facilities required for such advanced processors. But the design capability is back on the continent, and with it a degree of control over performance, architecture, and intellectual property. The integration of Rhea1 into JUPITER’s CPU cluster is the logical next step.
Sovereignty in motion
The duality of JUPITER’s development (reliance on old global supply chains, a future based on European processors) highlights the current situation in the European tech industry. But it also represents a real opportunity for Europe to take the lead in strategic direction. Sovereignty cannot be achieved overnight, it must be nurtured, step by step. The deployment of SiPearl’s Rhea1 – and subsequent generations beyond 3 mm – will mark a tangible shift in that direction. It is the reason why institutions like DG CONNECT and the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking invested in SiPearl from the beginning, and why Forschungszentrum Jülich has insisted on integrating European technology wherever possible.
In practical terms, Jupiter will enable European researchers to model climate change with unprecedented accuracy, test new materials for the energy transition, and train AI systems without depending exclusively on foreign infrastructure. In strategic terms, it signals that Europe is not content to remain a consumer of imported technology. The road is long. Full sovereignty in supercomputing would require not only processor design but also advanced fabrication capacity on European soil. Yet the inauguration of Jupiter, coupled with the promise of Rhea1 in 2026, shows that Europe is moving deliberately in that direction.
