KUWAIT CITY, Oct 5:  A consortium composed of French and German entities has secured an agreement to deliver Europe's inaugural "exascale" supercomputer, marking a significant stride for the continent in the realm of next-generation computing, aiming to close the gap with the United States.

The daily revealed that the consortium comprises Germany's Bartec and a division of the French company Atos.

The agreement was established with EuroHBC, a collaborative project involving the European Union, European nations, and private enterprises, focused on advancing supercomputing across Europe.

Supercomputers possess significantly more computing power than conventional ones, and an exascale computer can conduct a quintillion calculations per second (a million trillion, or a one followed by 18 zeros).

Valued at 500 million Euros ($524 million), the agreement outlines the provision of a supercomputer named Jupiter to the German Jülich Supercomputing Center.

The consortium confirmed that Jupiter will boast a computing capacity three times that of the current most potent supercomputer in Europe. The implementation will necessitate an area equivalent to approximately four tennis courts.