Bull has just achieved a masterstroke of the highest level worldwide, thanks to Tera 100. The new supercomputer which we have developed with and for the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, the CEA, has effectively been ranked as the most efficient in the world: an essential pre-requisite when it comes to production, because although it measures the machine’s intrinsic performance, it also gauges its stability when carrying out complex and intensive simulations. Tera 100 is also the first in Europe to break the Petaflops[1] barrier and number six in the world ranking of the most powerful supercomputers, the Top500. As such, Bull has just been singled out in the USA as one of the five companies to watch – the only one from Europe – in the field of Extreme Computing.
Mastering these kinds of extreme technologies is vital for Nations sovereignty and competitiveness, as Jean Gonnord – Director of Computer Simulation and IT Projects at the CEA’s Military Applications Directorate (CEA/DAM) – and Pierre Leca, Director of the Simulation and Information Sciences Department at CEA/DAM, emphasize so forcefully in this month’s Bull Direct. Europe has not yet done all that it needs to do in this area, in contrast to the USA and Japan who have been making massive investments for half a century, and China, whose current industrial policy is particularly assertive. But I’m sure that Europe is rapidly waking up to this.
Another great source of pride for us is the launch of extreme factory. With this new offering, Bull is actively bringing together digital simulation – an essential tool for innovation and the development of an environmentally-friendly economy – and Cloud computing, which is redefining the conditions for accessing and using IT resources. This is a real first! extreme factory is effectively the only fully integrated, pay-as-you-go digital simulation offering, which will enable organizations of every size to boost their competitiveness and their capacity for innovation without having to invest in costly computing resources. In France, as part of the President’s national economic recovery plan focused on investments for the future, we are actively supporting the Numinnov project, which is aimed at further speeding up this momentum.
Finally, I’d like to come back to our most recent set of financial results, which we were very pleased with: a 15.4% increase in revenues in Q3 and order intake up by 52.9% means we have been able to reaffirm our targets for the full financial year.
Thank you once again for your continued support.
Philippe Vannier
Chairman and CEO, Bull
[1] Teraflops [surely Petaflops ?!!]: one million billion operations a second
