[cryo32]

I look forward to the day we have a sovereign CPU, RAM, storage, ancillary ICs, production line, supply chain, software stack and associated infra than I can walk into a shop and buy and use myself.

I don't think it'll ever happen though. These initiatives are mostly fluff. Throw everything into AI because it's the current fad but not even look at stuff that runs everything RIGHT NOW.

If anything was to happen war-wise, we'll be running everything on recycled trash.

[yourusername]

>If anything was to happen war-wise, we'll be running everything on recycled trash.

ESMC should be online in a few years with 16nm class ICs. That will be tech that's over a decade old at that point but it's also "good enough" for anything except AI training.

[cryo32]

That's enough to do useful work. AI training is useless if you don't have something that'll do office work and supply chain logistics.

[whateverboat]

We have now sovereign CPUs but we are struggling to get HPC ones. They will be there soon though in 5-6 years. RAM is already possible for Europe to manufacture if they can get the fab. Supply chain remains a question mark for the raw materials. Software stack is almost there.

In effect, I would say we are around 60% there. The most important thing actually missing is Fabs. Everything else I see a straightforward path with money and time.

[fidotron]

HPC will always be years away.

There is a big structural problem in Europe with these sort of initiatives: people receive grants for attacking identified problems; if you actually solve the problem then you have to find a new problem for your next grant, so it's best to not actually solve the problem but claim your next proposal will.

Combine that by not actually wanting to reward people properly when problems are solved and you have the root of why eurotech has totally stagnated.

[whateverboat]

I would turn it differently. The grants are awarded but they come with requirements that are impossible to satisfy without severely degrading the quality of the product.

1. Most grants are one-off before the EU moves onto new fields of grants. Therefore, there is no way to build a deep expertise in a field for one particular center.

2. Most procurement are very top-down 1990s manner. This is no way to build infrastructure (by mandate). You need to fund competing proposals and then select good things from each of them. Instead, EU has this propensity to award only one single grant, which means every single big org that will be affected by this grant is on the proposal (probably), which then means that there is no room for opinionated stuff.

3. Most EuroHPC funding is national co-funding based, which means same proposal needs to be submitted 1 + x times where x is the number of countries in the proposal. Due to requirements of EuroHPC, x > 3. So, 4 proposals, 4 negotiation for any single idea. It is such a mess.

This in addition to bureaucracy where there is no dynamism in contract negotiations. There is no flexibility in rules. The EuroHPC and every single govt would be okay with projects failing rather than allowing for a small monetary rule change which allows the project to succeed. (This is not even about getting more money but transferring money from one bucket to another in the same project).

I can go on, but these are structural problems why HPC in Europe stagnates every day.

[soco]

No true Scostsman, aye me lad. Now really, because big bang doesn't work, means nothing else should be even tried? Are you even from the EU to actually know, or just feel bothered by the anti-US sentiment oozing from those initiatives? If that helps, my feeling is that it's not anti-US, just a normal reaction to the acts and thoughts of the beloved best-leader-ever ruling the US right now, and his faithful elite. It's trying to protect oneselves, maybe a bit of rallying under the (blue) flag, and defeatism has no place in it.

[cryo32]

I'm in the UK. My partner is German. I spend a lot of time in the EU.

It's really the "this is fine dog" realising that it's not fine and apathy and poor governmental and corporate decisions over the last 30 years have blown up in our faces.