NextSilicon at the ODISSEE Annual Consortium Meeting at CERN
Back in 2025, NextSilicon joined a bold initiative that brought the top leading European research agencies to tackle challenges in physics, space research, and cosmology. The ODISSEE (Online Data Intensive Solutions for Science in the Exabytes Era) project is a European initiative focusing on how to process, analyze, and extract insight from the unprecedented volumes of data generated by today’s flagship research infrastructures, such as CERN and the SKA Observatory. These facilities are expected to produce data at exabyte scale - demanding a new generation of computing technologies that go far beyond traditional architectures.
Supported by the EU’s Horizon Europe program, this endeavor fosters close collaboration between particle physics, radio astronomy, and advanced computing communities, working together to shape the future of scientific discovery. Since the project’s inception, NextSilicon joined leading research institutions, universities, and other innovative technology companies in the ODISSEE project, aiming to design and validate next-generation, data-intensive computing solutions that are scalable, energy-efficient, and adaptable across scientific domains. This project highlights increasing HPC sovereignty within the EU, not in the sense of technological isolation. Instead, it’s about achieving strategic autonomy as American and Asian tech powerhouses run their own race, increasingly focused on driving the adoption of AI. Thus, ODISSEE is on a mission to also position Europe as an active, sovereign contributor to a globally connected technology ecosystem.
Earlier this month, we joined our colleagues at the ODISSEE Project Annual Consortium Meeting at CERN, where NextSilicon was represented by Ilan Tayari, Co-Founder & VP of Architecture, and Oded Margalit, Head Scientist. During the three-day event, Ilan and Oded met with multiple project partners, engaging in deep technical and strategic discussions that further strengthened collaborations and deepened NextSilicon’s involvement in the project. Building on our partnership announcement and continued engagement throughout 2025, these interactions reinforced how NextSilicon’s ICA (Intelligent Compute Architecture) can help address the extreme performance, flexibility, and efficiency demands of data-intensive scientific workloads.
In this role, NextSilicon serves as a vital link between innovative hardware architectures and European HPC objectives, allowing us to demonstrate how our groundbreaking technology translates into research capabilities and long-term industrial impact.
Doing a Deep-Dive Deep Underground
The ODISSEE project has entered its second year (of three). In the first year, we had dozens of video conference meetings to coordinate the work. We delivered two servers with four Maverick-2 cards, trained participants in their use, and discussed ways to develop efficient solutions for Europe’s scientific computing needs. But meeting your collaborators in person is much more than that.
The first day was marked as the “science day”, as it was focusing on the problems: we heard five amazing talks on the challenges of finding discoveries when researching dark matter, radio astronomy, high energy physics, such as the Large Hadron Collider.
The second day, dubbed “technology day”, was about solutions: CEPP (Center for Excellence in Performance Programming), SiPreal’s advanced CPUs, EAS’s power optimization techniques, InPEX (International Post Exascale) research, tangent projects like RadioBlocks, Spectrum, and Intertwin.
The day concluded with a beautiful visit to CERN’s LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty). We went down 103 meters underground, where we could touch a data source for the ODISSEE project.
The third and last day of the conference was closed for the ODISSEE council board members only, where we went over our accomplishments in the first year and our plans for the coming two years. We used that opportunity to meet the people behind CERN’s OpenLab to further discuss possible collaborations.
Looking Beyond 2026: ODISSEE and European HPC Sovereignty
ODISSEE sits at the intersection of science, technology, and European strategic priorities. As the EU increasingly frames HPC as a critical infrastructure for digital competitiveness, NextSilicon’s role has become central.
In this context, NextSilicon acts as a bridge for European HPC objectives, demonstrating how a collaborative effort delivers sovereign research capabilities while creating tangible industrial impact. This includes initiatives like RISC-V and open processor ecosystems, exemplifying the strategy to establish sovereign hardware and software building blocks for future HPC and AI systems in Europe.
Through ODISSEE, we are developing innovative data-processing technologies that go beyond raw performance. In this way, the project strengthens Europe’s ability to process, analyze, and lead the world in exascale scientific discovery. At NextSilicon, we are proud to provide the silicon foundation that will turn today’s data into tomorrow’s greatest scientific legacies.
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Stay tuned as we share more details in future blogs and announcements via our Nextletter.
About the Author:
Elad Raz is the founder and CEO of NextSilicon, a company pioneering a radically new approach to HPC architecture that drives the industry forward by solving its biggest, most fundamental problems.
