Welcome to Alice Recoque, the first French exascale supercomputer

France is putting into production its first supercomputer capable of carrying out a billion billion operations per second. In addition to its scientific uses, it aims to strengthen the French technological attractiveness.

Alice Recoque is first and foremost a brilliant computer scientist, specialist in French artificial intelligence, born in 1929 and died in January 2021. She is a pioneer in technical work, but also in societal issues since she was among the first to worry about the capacity for surveillance of people born from the deployment of technologies.

It was decided, in 2024, to give its name to the future French exascale supercomputer, the second in Europe. The first, called Jupiter, was installed this year in Germany.

An exascale supercomputer is a computer capable of performing a large number of operations simultaneously. Alice Recoque will be able to perform a billion billion calculations per second. As an indication, the most powerful calculator currently in France – which entered service in 2019 and is called Jean Zay – is capable (since its fourth update in spring 2025) of carrying out 126 million billion operations per second.

This equipment is particularly useful to academic researchers, businesses and administrations for carrying out numerous simulation work.

For example, modeling studies to carry out climate change scenarios or to develop digital twins in the medical field in order to carry out highly personalized studies.

Likewise, to test the resistance of materials or variations in energy flow. This also makes it possible to use new major artificial intelligence models. This is essential for maintaining European scientific and technological competitiveness.

Alice Recoque’s budget is 554 million euros for the next five years. Like Jean Zay, it may be subject to updates, since these are technologies in continuous evolution.

Half-funded by a European body dedicated to supercomputer activities (EuroHPC) and by France, the Netherlands and Greece, it is managed by the GENCI (Large National Intensive Computing Equipment) with the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). Alice Recoque will be installed by the end of 2026 – following its manufacturing by the industrialist Eviden (Atos Group) – around thirty kilometers from Paris, in Essonne.

The criteria for using it are clear: the candidate research team must be established in France, even if the company concerned is foreign. And the work carried out with the supercomputer must be the subject of publications.

It is therefore a way to encourage the installation of Research & Development centers in France and to share as widely as possible within the scientific community the results obtained with this equipment financed by public funds.