The rollout of SiPearl's much-anticipated Rhea processor for European supercomputers has been pushed back by a year to 2025, but the delay comes with a silver lining - a significant upgrade in core count and potential performance. Originally slated to arrive in 2024 with 72 cores, the homegrown high-performance chip will now pack 80 cores when it eventually launches. This decisive move by SiPearl and its partners is a strategic choice to ensure the utmost quality and capabilities for the flagship European processor. The additional 12 months will allow the engineering teams to further refine the chip's architecture, carry out extensive testing, and optimize software stacks to take full advantage of Rhea's computing power. Now called the Rhea1, the chip is a crucial component of the European Processor Initiative's mission to develop domestic high-performance computing technologies and reduce reliance on foreign processors. Supercomputer-scale simulations spanning climate science, drug discovery, energy research and more all require astonishing amounts of raw compute grunt.

By scaling up to 80 cores based on the latest Arm Neoverse V1, Rhea1 aims to go toe-to-toe with the world's most powerful processors optimized for supercomputing workloads. The SiPearl wants to utilize TSCM's N6 manufacturing process. The CPU will have 256-bit DDR5 memory connections, 104 PCIe 5.0 lanes, and four stacks of HBM2E memory. The roadmap shift also provides more time for the expansive European supercomputing ecosystem to prepare robust software stacks tailored for the upgraded Rhea silicon. Ensuring a smooth deployment with existing models and enabling future breakthroughs are top priorities. While the delay is a setback for SiPearl's launch schedule, the substantial upgrade could pay significant dividends for Europe's ambitions to join the elite ranks of worldwide supercomputer power. All eyes will be on Rhea's delivery in 2025, mainly from Europe's governments, which are funding the project.

With more countries creating initiatives to develop homegrown processors capable of powering powerful supercomputing facilities, India has just presented its development milestone with Aum HPC. Thanks to information from the report by The Next Platform, we learn that India has developed a processor for powering its exascale high-performance computing (HPC) system. Called Aum HPC, the CPU was developed by the National Supercomputing Mission of the Indian government, which funded the Indian Institute of Science, the Department of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, and C-DAC to design and manufacture the Aum HPC processors and create strong, strong technology independence.

The Aum HPC is based on Armv8.4 CPU ISA and represents a chiplet processor. Each compute chiplet features 48 Arm Zeus Cores based on Neoverse V1 IP, so with two chiplets, the processor has 96 cores in total. Each core gets 1 MB of level two cache and 1 MB of system cache, for 96 MB L2 cache and 96 MB system cache in total. For memory, the processor uses 16-channel 32-bit DDR5-5200 with a bandwidth of 332.8 GB/s. To expand on that, HBM memory is present, and there is 64 GB of HBM3 with four controllers capable of achieving a bandwidth of 2.87 TB/s. As far as connectivity, the Aum HPC processor has 64 PCIe Gen 5 Lanes with CXL enabled. It is manufactured on a 5 nm node from TSMC. With a 3.0 GHz typical and 3.5+ GHz turbo frequency, the Aum HPC processor is rated for a TDP of 300 Watts. It is capable of producing 4.6+ TeraFLOPS per socket. Below are illustrations and tables comparing Aum HPC to Fujitsy A64FX, another Arm HPC-focused design.

The United States has recently imposed several sanctions on technology exports to China. These sanctions are designed to restrict the transfer of specific technologies and sensitive information to Chinese entities, particularly those with ties to the Chinese military or government. The primary motivation behind these sanctions is to protect American national security interests, as well as to protect American companies from unfair competition. According to Financial Times, we have information that Chinese tech Giant, Alibaba, can not access Arm licenses for Neoverse V1 technology. Generally, the technology group where Neoverse V-series falls in is called Wassenaar -- multilateral export control regime (MECR) with 42 participating states. This agreement prohibits the sale of technology that could be used for military purposes.

The US argues that Arm's Neoverse V1 IP is not only a product from UK's Arm but a design made in the US as well, meaning that it is a US technology. Since Alibaba's T-Head group responsible for designing processors that go into Alibaba's cloud services can not use Neoverse V1, it has to look for alternative solutions. The Neoverse V1 and V2 can not be sold in China, while Neoverse N1 and N2 can. Alibaba's T-Head engineer argued, "We feel that the western world sees us as second-class people. They won't sell good products to us even if we have money."