Alice Recoque: the Franco-European Exascale supercomputer

Alice Recoque will be Europe's second Exascale supercomputer - a machine capable of performing more than a billion billion operations per second. Hosted at the CEA's TGCC and operational by the end of 2027, it represents a major technological advance for the strategic, digital and scientific autonomy of France and the European Union.

  • Alice Recoque in brief

    In a context of intense international competition between the USA, China, Japan and the European Union for the deployment of high-performance computing technologies, the EU created EuroHPC JU in 2020. This entity finances R&D, training and support actions, but also acquires and makes available HPC supercomputers, resources for artificial intelligence and quantum technologies for the benefit of European scientific, academic and industrial communities.

    Alice Recoque is part of this strategy. This next-generation supercomputer will enable us to tackle major societal and scientific challenges thanks to the large-scale convergence of digital simulation, massive data analysis, AI and quantum computing. It will be the most powerful digital instrument ever deployed in France and Europe in the academic world.

    After a competitive dialogue procedure, EuroHPC has selected the French company Eviden (Bull) to supply the Alice Recoque computer.

    Announced in 2023, this project mobilizes a total budget of 554 million euros for 5 years of operation, co-financed by the members of the Jules Verne consortium (France, the Netherlands, Greece) and the European Commission. Alice Recoque will be based at the CEA's TGCC in Bruyères-le-Châtel, near Paris.

A unique tool for science

With unprecedented computing power, Alice Recoque will accelerate research in critical scientific fields such as:

  • High-resolution climate modeling to mitigate the effects of climate change and better predict the occurrence of extreme events
  • Innovation in new materials and energy sources of the future
  • Digital twins of the human body for personalized medicine
  • The development of the next major European frontier generative and agentic AI models and their use (inference) on a large scale
  • The processing of massive data streams from telescopes, satellites, IoT devices
  • The emergence of industrial and scientific quantum computing

Alice Recoque will be remotely and securely accessible to a wide range of users: European academic researchers, startups, manufacturers and public services. Access to computing resources will be managed jointly by EuroHPC JU and the Jules Verne consortium, in proportion to their investments, via systems of calls for projects, for France they will be set up by GENCI.

A Franco-European project: EuroHPC and the Jules Verne consortium

Alice Recoque is being acquired jointly by EuroHPC JU and the Jules Verne consortium. This consortium is led by France via GENCI (as host entity) with CEA (as host site, via its TGCC center). It also involves the Netherlands, represented by SURF, and Greece, represented by GRNET. Discussions are underway to integrate French public partners and industrialists.

The total cost of ownership (TCO) exceeds 554 million euros over 5 years. EuroHPC JU, owner of the equipment, is co-financing up to 50% of this amount via the Digital Europe program (DEP), supplemented by contributions from France, the Netherlands and Greece.

HPC, AI and quantum computing: Alice Recoque beyond the supercomputer

Alice Recoque combines three complementary technological dimensions: high-performance computing (HPC), large-scale artificial intelligence and hybrid quantum computing. Its modular, eco-efficient architecture will integrate several computing partitions, federated by a high-speed interconnection network and a data-centric storage architecture.

Building on current French and European initiatives, Alice Recoque will be coupled with quantum calculators, enabling the combination of classical resources and new European quantum technologies. It will thus be the first Exascale computer of this new generation - paving the way for post-Exascale architectures and services.

Alice Recoque is also part of the European Commission's AI Factories program, aimed at structuring a sovereign and competitive AI capability on a continental scale.

Preparing scientific communities: a key challenge

The performance of a supercomputer can only be measured through its actual use by communities. That's why GENCI and CEA, in partnership with Eviden (Bull) and AMD, have launched an onboarding program for scientific communities and national computing centers (CINES, IDRIS, TGCC).

On February 18 and 19, 2025, in the presence of AMD and Eviden, the first workshop dedicated to this program was held - a key moment to make the link between Alice Recoque and its future users: researchers, engineers, developers of scientific applications.

France - AMD: a strategic partnership for AI and Alice Recoque

On April 16, 2026, the French government and AMD signed a letter of intent at the Ministry of the Economy aimed at accelerating innovation in France and strengthening the country's position in the global artificial intelligence ecosystem.

This strategic partnership covers several priority areas:

  • Development of AI infrastructures in France
  • Support for research, training and higher education
  • Support for the ecosystem of French AI start-ups and companies

Concretely, collaboration with GENCI, the Jules Verne consortium and the CEA will be deepened as part of the deployment of Alice Recoque. A center of excellence dedicated to Alice Recoque will be set up to provide expertise, training and support to the ecosystem, and support the development of AI Factory France, the French component of the European Commission's AI Factories program.

Philippe Baptiste, Minister for Higher Education, Research and Space, said on the occasion: "Alice Recoque marks a decisive step in strengthening our research and innovation capabilities, in both the public and private sectors."

Michaël Krajecki, CEO of GENCI, recalled the infrastructure's central mission: to guarantee France's ability to calculate - and therefore decide - autonomously on its scientific, economic and strategic issues.

AMD is investing alongside all project stakeholders: optimizing application codes for scaling up, deploying the center of excellence, identifying priority applications (materials, energy including fusion, healthcare, fundamental physics) and anticipating the software needs of communities.

  • Key dates in the Alice Recoque project

    Key dates for the Alice Recoque project

    • June 2023 - Official announcement of the selection of the Jules Verne consortium's bid to host and operate Europe's second exascale class system
    • November 2025 - EuroHPC selects Eviden (Bull) to supply the Alice Recoque computer
    • February 18-19, 2026- First onboarding workshop for scientific communities
    • April 16, 2026 - Signing of the letter of intent between France and AMD
    • End of 2027 - Scheduled commissioning of Alice Recoque at CEA's TGCC

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