Bull, the French state-owned supercomputer manufacturer, commissioned its newly upgraded Angers plant on October 1st, doubling its capacity as Europe accelerates the development of computing power for artificial intelligence (AI).

This is the only factory in Europe specializing in the manufacture of supercomputers, playing a key role in the European Union's (EU) plan to build a supercomputer network aimed at narrowing the gap with the US and China . The bloc has committed 7 billion euros (approximately 7.87 billion USD) between 2021 and 2027 to this plan.

With an €80 million upgrade project, Bull's monthly production has increased from 6 to 12 racks (cabinets for network equipment and servers) and could reach 24 by 2027. This allows Bull to simultaneously assemble two large orders. The first is the Alice Recoque supercomputer, worth €554 million, for the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), co-funded by France and the EU, with deliveries expected in batches starting later this year. The second is the LUMI-AI system, worth €388 million, for Finland – the company's largest private contract to date.

According to CEO Emmanuel Le Roux, Bull has received an unprecedented number of orders this year. The company won 15 out of 18 EuroHPC (the EU agency co-funding the supercomputer network) contracts, beating competitors such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise of the United States.

Bull also built JUPITER, Europe's first exascale supercomputer capable of processing trillions of calculations per second. Cloud computing provider OVHcloud and the European Commission-backed company Domyn are training advanced AI models on this system.

The French government completed the acquisition of Bull from the debt-ridden Atos group on March 31st, at a valuation of 404 million euros. According to Mr. Le Roux, the initial motivation for this decision was strategic. In the 1980s, when the US stopped supplying supercomputers to the CEA, France commissioned Bull to build nuclear test simulators.

According to an agreement signed in June, Bull will partner with Taiwan's Foxconn to manufacture Nvidia's NVL systems in the Czech Republic, with final assembly taking place in Angers. Notably, components manufactured in Europe now account for 70% of the machines Bull is building, a significant improvement from the 20-30% figure five years ago.

Source: https://vtv.vn/bull-tang-gap-doi-san-luong-sieu-may-tinh-cho-chau-au-100261002151710795.htm