Bull CEO: Memory, not processors, is the weak point of Europe’s supercomputers

Memory, not processors, remains the weakest point of European supercomputers, warns the chief executive of the French company Bull, as Reuters reports. Europe already supplies around 70 per cent of the components of the machines it builds on the continent — boards, interconnects, cooling systems and increasingly processors — from 20–30 per cent five years ago, but memory is the last major component with no European supplier.

“The problem is memory,” Emmanuel Le Roux told Reuters at the company’s factory in Angers. “We don’t see anything coming.” European processors are advancing — SiPearl, in which Bull holds a stake, Vsora and Openchip — but memory prices have risen sharply and are becoming, according to him, one of the industry’s biggest concerns.

Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron produce over 90 per cent of the world’s memory, as Reuters writes. Memory chips hold the data the machine is working on at that moment, and supercomputers need them in large quantities; processors make up only 10–20 per cent of a supercomputer’s value.

European memory initiatives exist, but would take a long time to build, Le Roux said. The warning comes at a time when rising demand for computing power from artificial intelligence is turning dependence on imports into a strategic issue.

Bull, the French supercomputer manufacturer, is one of the main actors of the European supercomputing programme; such a comment from its head increases the pressure on EU industrial policies for digital sovereignty.