Fujitsu to ship PRIMEHPC supercomputers in March 2020
Fujitsu is preparing to commence global sales of its new supercomputer series, which is scheduled to start shipping from March 2020.
The Fujitsu PRIMEHPC FX1000 and PRIMEHPC FX700 models both utilize technology of the Fugaku supercomputer, which was jointly developed by Fujitsu and RIKEN.
Both products are equipped with the world's first CPU A64FX adopting Scalable Vector Extension (SVE) which is an extension of the Arm v8-A architecture for supercomputers.
The A64FX was developed by inheriting the high-performance, low-power CPU design that Fujitsu has developed so far, provides high performance per watt. The CPU not only achieves a high memory bandwidth by using HBM2, which Fujitsu describes as a high-performance die-stacked memory, but also can handle half-precision arithmetic and multiply-add, which are important in such technologies as deep learning.
"In this way, the new supercomputers are expected to expand its use in the field of AI," Fujitsu says.
The FX1000 can build large systems that deliver theoretical computing performance in excess of 1.3 exaflops. This model uses a water-cooling system, aiming for high performance and reduced total energy consumption including in cooling. It supports the same Tofu interconnect D as Fugaku for maximum scalability in large configurations.
The FX700 is based on standard technologies for supercomputer systems. It supports InfiniBand as an interconnect and using open source software (OSS) for HPC middleware. By adopting an air-cooling system and a chassis that can be mounted in a standard server rack, this model is designed to be easily deployed for customers.
Arm's infrastructure line of business senior vice president and general manager, Chris Bergey, comments:
"The arm has leveraged our strategic collaboration with Fujitsu and RIKEN to evolve our architecture and advance the innovation and performance of Arm-based processors for HPC. We value Fujitsu's strong commitment to bringing their cutting edge A64FX chips to market with the announcement of the PRIMEHPC FX1000 and FX700 supercomputers and believe they are industry-leading building blocks for exascale systems.
Fujitsu participates in open communities such as Arm Developer, Linaro and OpenHPC, devoting to develop the Arm HPC ecosystem by bringing the company's high-performance computing (HPC) technologies and knowledge to the community.
The company says it plans to work with application vendors to be available commercial application software for PRIMEHPC, including the crash analysis application LS-DYNA.
"By developing and offering high-performance supercomputers, Fujitsu will continue to contribute to the resolution of social issues, the promotion of leading-edge research, and the enhancement of corporate competitiveness," Fujitsu says.
"In particular, the company will develop new drugs, realize a safe and secure society through disaster prevention and reduction, while establishing no prototyping in the development of new materials and manufacturing.
