By Mathieu Rosemain

PARIS (Reuters), France’s Atos aims at doubling its market share for supercomputing by 2026. This is a step up in European competition against the United States, China and other countries.

BullSequana, an IT and technology consulting company, presented Wednesday’s new BullSequana Supercomputer, which can do up to 1 billion operations per second.

It stated that this level of computing power will be helpful in solving problems such as simulating effects from new drugs or nuclear fission, forecasting weather conditions and climate change.

Arnaud Berrand, head of innovation strategy at Atos cybersecurity and supercomputing unit BDS, said, “It’s basically a chassis that can carry any type engine and link it with other chassis in order for to carry more load.”

Bertrand indicated that Atos wanted to more than double its market share for supercomputing in the future, from 8% at present. However, the financial targets of Atos are not disclosed by the group.

According to the company, Atos’s latest supercomputer was created in Angers, in western France. It has six times the computing power of its predecessor.

Bertrand stated that today’s supercomputing heavyweights are Hewlett Packard Enterprise in the USA (NYSE:) as well as China’s Lenovo Group OTC:. China’s Sugon is another rival, as well Japan’s Fujitsu.

Atos is Europe’s only manufacturer of high-performance computing products (HPC) and France co-finances EuroHPC. This joint venture involves private companies and European countries.

EuroHPC, France’s Atomic Energy Commission CEA, and India’s government are three of Atos’ top clients.

However, the United States and Asia still supply key components for Atos’ supercomputers. Bertrand explained that part of Atos’ production will be relocated to Europe.

He said, “We cannot ask China or the United States to authorize us if tomorrow’s we want the climate impact and if we are interested in developing the next generation drugs.”