SiPearl works with AMD on GPU support for Arm HPC chip

Duo also hope to support development of exascale computing at research institutions

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

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

This latest agreement sees the company enter a business collaboration with AMD towards a joint offering for exascale supercomputing systems using their respective technologies.

AMD and SiPearl said they will start by working on the interoperability of AMD's ROCm software stack for developing GPU accelerated applications with SiPearl's Rhea microprocessor. The aim is to ensure that a software ecosystem is in place ready for 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 optimization of AMD's Heterogeneous Interface for Portability (HIP), created to let developers write portable code to target both AMD and Nvidia GPUs, the duo said.

Beyond this, AMD and SiPearl said they'll "engage with OEMs adopting the Rhea microprocessor with AMD Instinct accelerators in their designs," which simply means they will work with any hardware company considering using this combination of silicon to build an actual HPC system.

The two companies also said they hope to expand the joint work to include European research institutions supporting research modeling tools, which would enable developers to port and optimize their applications for any system using a SiPearl/AMD solution.

SiPearl would appear to be covering all the bases as far as GPU support goes; earlier this year, it announced a similar agreement with Nvidia to ensure software support for its GPUs to operate with SiPearl's Rhea processor, and last year said it was working with Intel to enable its Ponte Vecchio GPU and oneAPI 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 tech. "Providing a broader choice for European supercomputer end-users, it will enable Europe to tackle the great challenges of our time such as artificial intelligence, climate modelling and medical research," he said in a statement.

AMD vice president for Data Center and Accelerated Processing Brad McCredie said: "AMD is delighted to engage one step further in the European Ecosystem with SiPearl to jointly offer a clear path to meet exascale supercomputing demands in Europe."

SiPearl's Rhea processor, designed in partnership with Atos, will feature 72 of Arm's Neoverse V1 cores and both DDR5 and high-bandwidth HBM2E memory interfaces. The processor was supposed to have been available this year, but it appears that the first chips, to be manufactured by TSMC, will appear in 2023. ®