Alice Recoque by GENCI / CEA: status and timeline

Alice Recoque

Give European researchers and companies a sovereign machine for climate, materials, medicine and large AI models, at more than one exaflop/s in about 15 MW.

ProtoStage 2 of 5

Being built by Eviden for TGCC; delivery in two stages, end of 2026 and 2027; users expected in 2027.

Updated 18 Nov 2025Checked 11 Oct0 updates this week

Milestones

Next · Installation and deployment begin at TGCC

EuroHPC picks Jules Verne consortium to host it20 Jun 2023Complete.
Eviden selected, contract signed at SC2518 Nov 2025Complete.
Installation and deployment begin at TGCCTarget 2026Current milestone.
First delivery stageTarget Q4 2026Not yet reached.
Second delivery stageTarget 2027Not yet reached.
First researchers on the systemTarget 2027+3 mo~~originally Q4 2026~~Not yet reached.

Most important updates

Upcoming

2026Installation and deployment begin at TGCC (next)
Q4 2026First delivery stage
Q4 2026First stage of Alice Recoque delivered to TGCC
2027Second delivery stage
2027First researchers on the system+3 mo~~originally Q4 2026~~
2027First researchers start using Alice Recoque

Current obstacles

Later than first plannedThe 2024 tender schedule had the main partition running in Q4 2026; opening to users is now expected in 2027.
New chips, new softwareMI430X GPUs and Rhea2 CPUs are new; scientific codes must be ported and tuned before the machine reaches full use.
Site power and floorTGCC is adding 24 MW of power, a 20 MW cooling loop and a reinforced floor for the heavy racks.

Physics limits

The power wallEach calculation costs energy and becomes heat. An exaflop machine already draws over 10 MW, so more speed needs more efficient chips, not just more of them.
Moving data costs more than mathsFetching numbers from memory or across the network takes far more time and energy than the arithmetic itself, so many codes run well below peak speed.
Failures grow with sizeWith tens of thousands of parts, something breaks often; long jobs must save checkpoints and restart, which wastes time.

How it works

4 parts

GPUs

AMD MI430X does the heavy maths

Most work runs on GPUs that do thousands of calculations in parallel, each with 432 GB of fast stacked memory beside it.

CPUs

Two kinds of processors

AMD Venice CPUs feed the GPUs; a separate partition of European SiPearl Rhea2 Arm chips runs codes that don't suit GPUs.

Network

European interconnect

Eviden's BXI v3 network links thousands of nodes at up to 800 Gb/s, so one job can spread across the whole machine.

Cooling

Warm-water cooling

Water flows through plates on the chips. Warm water still works, so it can be cooled without chillers, saving energy.

Spec sheet

Spec	Alice Recoque
Double-precision performance	Over 1 exaflop/s^R (reported)
Power in production	Under 15 MW^R (reported)
Total budget (5 years)	€554M^R (reported)
System contract	€354.8M^R (reported)
Memory per GPU (MI430X)	432 GB HBM4, 19.6 TB/s^R (reported)
Scalar partition (Rhea2)	Over 100,000 Arm cores^R (reported)
Network per GPU / CPU	800 / 400 Gb/s (BXI v3)^R (reported)

^R reported by the company

Update log

2 updates

Tue 18 Nov 2025

Major: Eviden selected to build Alice Recoque exascale supercomputer with AMD MI430X GPUs and SiPearl Rhea2 CPUsPressCommercial

Tue 20 Jun 2023

Major: EuroHPC picks France's Jules Verne consortium to host Europe's second exascale supercomputer at TGCCPressPartnership

About GENCI / CEA

The team behind Alice Recoque

GENCI / CEA

French national supercomputers, TGCC

GENCI is France's national agency for research supercomputers; CEA, the French atomic and alternative energies commission, runs the TGCC centre near Paris that hosts them. Together they are building Alice Recoque, Europe's second exascale machine.

Alice Recoque: a €554M, five-year project for a machine above one exaflop/s, hosted at CEA's TGCC.
Built by Eviden with AMD MI430X GPUs and European SiPearl Rhea2 chips; delivery from end of 2026.
GENCI is owned 49% by the French state, 20% CEA, 20% CNRS, 10% France Universités, 1% Inria.

genci.fr (opens genci.fr)Company profile →

Founded: 200719 yrs
Headquarters: France
Status: Government
Valuation: government
Works in: ComputingAI factories & supercomputers
Coverage: 1 program · 2 updateslatest 18 Nov 2025checked 11 Oct
Partners: EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (opens eurohpc-ju.europa.eu)
Suppliers: EvidenAMD (opens amd.com)SiPearl
People: Philippe Lavocat (opens genci.fr)CEO, GENCIStéphane Requena (opens lemondeinformatique.fr)CTO, GENCI

Spec

Alice Recoque

Double-precision performance

Over 1 exaflop/s^R (reported)

Power in production

Under 15 MW^R (reported)

Total budget (5 years)

€554M^R (reported)

System contract

€354.8M^R (reported)

Memory per GPU (MI430X)

432 GB HBM4, 19.6 TB/s^R (reported)

Scalar partition (Rhea2)

Over 100,000 Arm cores^R (reported)

Network per GPU / CPU

800 / 400 Gb/s (BXI v3)^R (reported)