Fujitsu Aims for $1Billion in HPC Sales

fujitsuWow.  $1 billion is a big number.  The folks at Fujitsu have set the bar at $1 Billion in supercomputing sales in five years time.  This, challenging the likes of HP and IBM.  Masahiko Yamada, president of Fujitsu technical computing solutions, quotes the company shooting for 10 percent of the $9 billion market from 2.2 percent today.

Manufacturers are using these tools to become more competitive,” Yamada said in an interview in Tokyo. Fujitsu has sold supercomputers with as many as 2,600 processors to auto and precision-equipment makers, he said, declining to identify any. “The day isn’t that far off when things like cars or cell phones will be designed from beginning to end inside a computer.”

The beginning of their push includes a project at Japan’s Institute of Physical and Chemical Research near Osaka which is aimed at being the fastest machine on the planet by 2012.  10PF in 80,000 processors, not bad.  Fujitsu’s expansion in supercomputers follows the Japanese government’s reduction of funding from a project that had included Hitachi Ltd. and NEC Corp. to produce the world’s quickest computer. The latter two companies have withdrawn from the business of developing supercomputers.

Supercomputers are to the information technology world, what F1 racing is to automakers,” said Makoto Taiji, a computer-science professor at Japan’s Riken Institute, in Saitama prefecture, north of Tokyo, where he leads a team that uses computers to simulate molecular interactions. “Companies use them to showcase what they can do technically, and in the end, it feeds into everyday products.”

For more info on Fujitsu’s push into HPC, read their full article here.