The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - National Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS) yesterday presented the Sargantana chips, the third generation of Spain's first open source processors, whose development it has coordinated. The organization has also made its design public so that any person or organization can copy it and adapt it to their needs.
"We are developing a technology that will allow, in the future, Spain and Europe to design their own increasingly competitive processors, in addition to training the future professionals of a sector that will undoubtedly bring great value to the production chain", he highlight Miquel Moretó, project coordinator. With this educational idea in mind, the researchers are talking to 23 Spanish universities to develop teaching materials that facilitate the use of the chip in degrees and masters.
The idea is that open source chips, public and without a defined owner, will reduce the current dependence on large corporations and contribute to innovation through collaboration between institutions. A good example of this is the consortium that has achieved the development of Sargantana, in which the Computing Research Center of the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico (CIC-IPN), the National Microelectronics Center (CNM- CSIC), and the Catalan universities UPC, UAB, UB and URV.
The chip, which occupies a tiny surface of less than three square millimeters and "will be vital to guarantee technological sovereignty and maintain European industrial competitiveness, consolidates the role of the BSC as a pioneer in Europe in the introduction of open source for the chip design", pointed out Mateo Valero, director of the BSC.
Valero's idea is to turn Barcelona into an international point of reference in processor design. "We have the talent, technological knowledge and scientific environment necessary for Barcelona and its surroundings to compete with any institution or region in the world," he said.
The processor has achieved better performance than its predecessors, the Lizard and the DVINO. The device contains a density of transistors—the most basic part of any electronic device—much greater than previous ones and is capable of carrying out more than a billion instructions in a second. "We are still far from the most competitive technological nodes, but it is a modern technology and we believe it is a very important step forward", concludes Moretó.
Sargantana is an experimental chip, which is not intended to be installed in any computer. The prototype is part of the process the researchers are following to learn how to develop a competitive processor.
The consortium has already sent to manufacture the fourth generation of chips, named Kamaleon, which will integrate specific functions for security, genomics, automotive and task scheduling.
Meanwhile, the BSC has begun work on integrating its technology with that of the other major continental project, the European Processor Initiative (EPI), to develop a prototype chip closer to a product of market that can eventually be integrated into a computer. To achieve this, they have at least five years of work left.
