Fujitsu, working with Riken, it has completed the design of Post-K, the successor to the K supercomputer.
The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) is aiming to start the public service of Post-K around 2021 or 2022.
Fujitsu has now concluded an official contract with Riken to manufacture, ship, and install hardware for Post-K.
In addition, Fujitsu will productise a commercial supercomputer using technology created in the Post-K development process, and plans to begin global sales in the second half of fiscal 2019.
Since 2006, Fujitsu and Riken have jointly developed the K computer, aiming to start public service in 2012. 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.
As a major platform, Post-K will also support the creation of “Society 5.0”, the Japanese government’s vision for an ideal future society.
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 parallelisation, extremely low power consumption, and mainframe-class levels of reliability.
In addition, 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.
Fujitsu will promote the development and deployment of the system in preparation for Post-K to start public service. Using the technologies created through the development of Post-K, Fujitsu will productise 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 utilisation of technologies such as computational science, simulations, data utilization, and AI, by developing and delivering high performance supercomputers.
Brent Gorda, senior director of HPC at Arm, comments: “Arm’s successful collaboration with Fujitsu and Riken underscores our commitment to the HPC ecosystem. 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.”