Fujitsu to Productize Post-K Supercomputer Technologies

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Today Fujitsu announced that it has completed the design of Post-K supercomputer for deployment at RIKEN in Japan. While full-production of the full machine is not scheduled until 2021-2022, Fujitsu disclosed plans to productize the Post-K technologies and begin global sales in the second half of fiscal 2019.

Arm’s successful collaboration with Fujitsu and RIKEN underscores our commitment to the HPC ecosystem,” said Brent Gorda, senior director of HPC at Arm. “Reaching the production milestone marks a significant achievement for Post-K and we are excited to see the potential for broader deployment of Arm-based Fujitsu technologies in support of HPC and AI applications. We congratulate Fujitsu and RIKEN for their outstanding work in delivering Post-K.”

Since 2006, Fujitsu and RIKEN have jointly developed the K computer, aiming to start public service in 2012. The K computer to this day offers world class performance in major performance metrics that show the practical usefulness of supercomputers, serving as an indispensable research and development platform for cutting-edge research. Post-K is the successor to the K computer, and it is expected to serve as both a cutting-edge research and development platform for solving a variety of social and scientific issues.

About the Start of Production

At a meeting of the Council for Science, Technology, and Innovation held on November 22, 2018, it was reported that, based on an interim evaluation of the development of Post-K, the project was expected to meet its development goals. Accordingly, the Council judged that it was appropriate to steadily move forward with production and installation based on the results of the system design process. As a result, Fujitsu and RIKEN have now signed an official contract to begin production of hardware for Post-K, and then proceed to shipment and installation. The production of hardware for Post-K will be conducted by Fujitsu IT Products Limited, Fujitsu’s key computer system plant, and the hardware will be installed in the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS), where the K computer is currently located.

Features of Post-K

Post-K will be equipped with A64FX, a high-performance CPU developed by Fujitsu, and the new system will support a wide range of software due to its use of the Arm instruction set architecture, while offering features such as high parallelization, extremely low power consumption, and mainframe-class levels of reliability. Moreover, as part of the development and production of this hardware in addition to the development of software, Fujitsu will work with open source communities. For example, the company will promote the Arm ecosystem, utilize open source software with Post-K, and apply the results obtained with the supercomputer.

Future Plans

Fujitsu will promote the development and deployment of the system in preparation for Post-K to start public service. Moreover, utilizing the technologies created through the development of Post-K, Fujitsu will productize the commercial supercomputer, and plans to begin global sales as the successor to the Fujitsu Supercomputer PRIMEHPC FX100 in the second half of fiscal 2019. In order to implement these technologies more broadly, Fujitsu is also considering measures such as developing an entry-level model that will be easy to deploy, or supplying these technologies to other vendors.

Going forward, Fujitsu will continue to contribute to the development and utilization of technologies such as computational science, simulations, data utilization, and AI, by developing and delivering high performance supercomputers.

In this video from the HPC User Forum, Satoshi Matsuoka from RIKEN presents: Arm A64fx and Post-K: Game-Changing CPU & Supercomputer for HPC and its Convergence with Big Data / AI.

The company’s efforts in the development of Post-K will be exhibited at Fujitsu Forum 2019, to be held on May 17 at the Tokyo International Forum in Japan.

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