Fujitsu wins Hokkaido University order for supercomputer, cloud

Fujitsu has received an order from the Information Initiative Center of Hokkaido University for an interdisciplinary, large-scale computing system with a theoretical peak performance of 4.0 petaflops*, consisting of a supercomputer system and a cloud system. 

The solution will further advance uses and research in such existing areas as scientific and technological simulations, artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and data science, and will provide an environment that can meet an even broader range of needs as people are trained to use the large-scale computing system for groundbreaking research. The Information Initiative Center of Hokkaido University will rely on it to provide compute resources to the High Performance Computing Infrastructure** (HPCI) and Joint Usage/Research Center for Interdisciplinary Large-scale Information Infrastructures (JHPCN)***, thereby opening system resources to researchers throughout Japan, including those at private companies. 

Hokkaido University, the largest university in Hokkaido, is a hub for education and research. The Information Initiative Center of Hokkaido University provides an academic information platform as a national joint-use facility for academic research by university faculty members, graduate students, and researchers throughout Japan. The Information Initiative Center of Hokkaido University currently operates the Hokkaido University Academic Cloud, which is comprised of an interdisciplinary large-scale computing system that includes a supercomputer system and a cloud system, and petabyte-class data science unified cloud storage. 

To upgrade its interdisciplinary large-scale computing system to the Hokkaido University High-Performance Inter-Cloud, it is building both a supercomputer system that will improve the processing performance of the existing system by over 20 times, and a nationwide wide-area distributed cloud system that can also be used for research on clouds and networks. 

The new supercomputer system is a massively parallel computer system with two parts. Subsystem A is comprised of 1,004 PRIMERGY CX2550 M4 x86 servers that are equipped with the Intel Xeon Scalable family of processors, and subsystem B consists of 288 Fujitsu Server PRIMERGY CX1640 M1 x86 servers that are equipped with Intel Xeon Phi processors. Each compute node is connected with Intel Omni-Path Architecture, the latest high-speed interconnect for highly parallel computing performance.

The new cloud system has 64 x86 servers, including the Fujitsu Server PRIMERGY RX2540 M4 with NVIDIA Tesla V100, the latest GPU computing card, deployed to eight locations: Hokkaido University and seven other remote sites in the Kanto, Kansai, and Kyushu regions of Japan. Connecting these servers to the SINET5**** academic backbone network makes it a nationwide wide-area distributed cloud system that extends from Hokkaido to Kyushu. The cloud platform uses the Mirantis Cloud Platform, with OpenStack at its core, delivering the latest research environment.

With Fujitsu Software Technical Computing Suite, Fujitsu's high performance computing (HPC) middleware for large-scale systems, the system offers optimal controls and node occupancy for jobs, improving the convenience of a wide variety of anticipated operations. It also provides flexible electric power controls to conserve power by limiting the maximum electric power consumed by each user and turning the power for nodes on or off.

Dr Yoshiaki Takai, Director, Information Initiative Center, Hokkaido University said, "The Hokkaido University High-Performance Inter-Cloud is a transformational research promotion platform for advanced research that uses large-scale computational science simulations, AI, big data, and the Internet of Things (IoT), leading to the creation of a super-smart society. The deployment of this system, which delivers the dramatically improved peak performance of 4 petaflops, will meet the expectations of universities and research institutions, as well as private sector researchers, throughout Japan, while promoting the further acceleration of academic research in Japan."

The solution is expected to begin operations in December 2018. 

*Petaflops stand for peta floating point operations per second. Peta is an SI prefix indicating one quadrillion, or 10 to the power of 15, so this indicates performance of one quadrillion floating point operations per second.

**A computing environment that connects the K computer and major supercomputers located in universities and laboratories across Japan in a network to meet the diverse needs of users.

***A network of joint use and research locations made up of supercomputer facilities at Hokkaido University, Tohoku University, the University of Tokyo, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Nagoya University, Kyoto University, Osaka University, and Kyushu University, with the Information Technology Center at the University of Tokyo serving as the core location.

****SINET stands for Science Information NETwork. It is an information and communications network that is constructed and operated by the National Institute of Informatics as an academic backbone network for universities and research institutions throughout Japan.