Atos unit, ParTec sign deal for Europe's first Exascale supercomputer

(Reuters) - A Franco-German consortium said on Wednesday it had signed a deal to provide Europe's first Exascale supercomputer, as the region tries to catch up with the United States in next-generation computing.

The consortium, comprising Germany's ParTec and unit of France's Atos, said it had struck the deal with EuroHPC, a joint venture between the EU, European countries and private firms aimed at promoting supercomputing in Europe.

Supercomputers are vastly more powerful than traditional ones, and an Exascale supercomputer can perform one quintillion - or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 - calculations per second.

The 500 million euro ($524 million) deal will see the consortium provide a supercomputer, called JUPITER, for the German Jülich Supercomputing Centre.

"JUPITER will have three times the computing capability of Europe’s current most powerful supercomputer", the consortium said, adding it would require the space of about four tennis courts.

($1 = 0.9537 euros)

(Reporting by Gaëlle Sheehan; Editing by Mark Potter)