Frédéric Hannoyer has been appointed chief operating officer and managing director of SiPearl, the microprocessor designer for Europe's future exascale supercomputers.

In April, SiPearl signed a technology licensing agreement with Arm, to use its Neoverse platform, Zeus, and to leverage the company's software and hardware.

The 48-year-old has now officially taken up his role at SiPearl this month and will supervise "technological and industrial partnerships" to help it achieve the first European HPC microprocessor by 2022.

Frederich Hanoyer.JPG
Frédéric Hannoyer – LinkedIn

Years of experience

Hannoyer has a background in the electronics and semiconductor industry with the likes of éolane, STMicroelectronics, Sigma Designs, as well as engineering and software applications for Tenfold, and Honeywell Aerospace.

SiPearl is a European semiconductor company that hopes to design and distribute low-power processors for automotive and HPC markets, eventually to be used in European exascale systems. The organization is supported by the European Union under the European Processor Initiative (EPI).

SiPearl is working with 26 European tech firms, including HPC centers like the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.

Earlier in June, the EPI delivered its first architectural designs to the European Commission. The EPI plans to build a European microprocessor using RISC-V architecture, embedded FPGA and Arm components, ready for a pre-exascale system in 2021, and an upgraded version for the exascale supercomputer in 2022/23.

EPI Roadmap
– European Processor Initiative

Part of the wider EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and funded under the EU's Horizon 2020 program, the “European Processor Initiative will deliver key technologies to the new European HPC strategic plan for an independent and innovative European high-performance computing and data ecosystem," Jean-Marc Denis, EPI chairman of the board, said.

"Energy-efficient high-performance families of EPI processors will include most advanced general-purpose and accelerator cores that will deliver unprecedented processing capabilities, enabling EU researchers from academia and industry to most efficiently address global challenges.

"The business sustainability of the initiative is supported by carefully balanced target markets, with a primary focus on exascale HPC/AI and automotive markets."

Last year, DCD profiled the EPI, as well as the US, Chinese, and Japanese efforts to build exascale supercomputers.

Further reading