Barcelona Supercomputing Center launches Europe's most advanced open-source chip

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) has developed Europe's most advanced open-source microchip, featuring transistors just 1.8 nanometers in size. This chip processes information rapidly and uses less energy than current market-leading chips, which have transistors between 4 and 5 nanometers.

"We want to move toward European technological sovereignty, and this prototype represents a major step forward. It is open-source, and we are now making it available to any company that wants to produce it on a large scale. This technology is crucial for supercomputers and for data centers specializing in artificial intelligence," says Mateo Valero, director of the BSC.

“We want to turn the city of Barcelona into a Design Valley, a leading hub for microchip design in Europe”

Mateo Valero, director of the BSC

Share quote:

• X
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Whatsapp

In collaboration with Intel

The initiative was developed in collaboration with Intel. Specifically, the U.S. tech giant conducted the performance tests. However, it will not necessarily be Intel that decides to scale up microchip production. "That remains to be seen. The BSC has already fulfilled its mission after three and a half years of development and research," say the project directors, Osman Sabri Unsal, head of the Computer Architecture for Parallel Paradigms group, and Miquel Moretó, director of the HPC Architecture research area.

Companies interested in large-scale production must now approach the BSC to use this technology. The project involved 200 professionals and was funded with public resources, including 43 million euros from the Spanish Perte chip program, supported by European Next Generation funds. Intel has also committed up to 20 million euros for operational testing of the prototype.

"The technology is the most advanced in Europe in the field of open-source chips, but it is true that there may be private initiatives that have developed chips with 1.8-nanometer transistors," the officials agree, noting that the BSC is a public research institution.

With the prototype complete, BSC will now lead the DARE megaproject, a European initiative with a 240 million euro budget, equally funded by European, state, and private sources. The project involves around forty leading supercomputing institutions from both sectors. Notably, the Catalan company Openchip has received 52 million euros. The project began last year and will run for up to six years.

"We want to turn the city of Barcelona into a Design Valley, a leading hub for microchip design in Europe," says Mateo Valero. Researchers add that DARE aims to design a constellation of microchips to provide greater flexibility and speed in information processing.

Source: Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) & La Vanguardia