FUJITSU COMPUTING AS A SERVICE IS LAUNCHED

Fujitsu introduces new services, starting with the Fujitsu Cloud Service HPC, which uses the technology of the supercomputer Fugaku.

The new service includes advanced computing resources such as Fujitsu’s quantum-inspired Digital Annealer technology – the computing technology also at the heart of the world’s fastest supercomputer Fugaku, and software applications that enable a wide range of users to solve problems with AI and machine learning. Fujitsu will offer these new services to the Japanese market from October 2022. A global launch in international regions such as Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Americas will follow.

As a first step, Fujitsu has started pre-ordering the  Fujitsu Cloud Service HPC. This offers the computing power of the  Fujitsu supercomputer PRIMEHPC FX1000, which uses the same CPU as the core of the supercomputer Fugaku. As of April 6, 2022, Fujitsu has started selling the service to Japan’s general public and businesses, with deliveries scheduled to begin in October. In the coming months, Fujitsu will add more benefits for its Digital Annealer technology and AI cloud services to its service offering to offer more value-added services that seamlessly integrate different solutions.

“CaaS will provide customers with seamless access to services in the public cloud to meet fast-growing computing needs and leverage Fujitsu’s world-leading advanced computing technologies. In the future, we want to further expand the portfolio with technologies such as quantum computing,” says Vivek Mahajan, Chief Technology Officer (Corporate Executive Officer, SEVP) at Fujitsu. “This step is an important milestone on the road to democratizing high-performance and quantum computing and will play an important role in realizing Fujitsu’s goal: to make the world more sustainable by creating trust in society through innovation .”

With CaaS, Fujitsu wants to realize the vision of a more sustainable world in line with the global corporate brand FUJITSU Avance. It is also intended to encourage the commercial exploitation of a range of advanced computing technologies that have been largely limited to academic applications due in part to prohibitively high capital costs, implementation, and operational burdens.

Democratizing high-performance computing: lowering entry barriers

Cost continues to be a major barrier for many companies and organizations that want to deploy advanced computing technologies such as Fujitsu’s Digital Annealer and High-Performance Computing (HPC) in their enterprise. Fujitsu will offer users easy access to a range of services as part of its new CaaS portfolio to solve this problem. These allow users from various industries to leverage the power of Fujitsu’s advanced computing technologies easily.

Overview of CaaS                                              

The CaaS portfolio represents one of the main pillars of the Fujitsu brand “Uvance” to create a sustainable world and solve societal problems through digital innovation.

The service portfolio offers comprehensive support for customers with software, a service integration platform, and consulting and tuning services based on the cloud. This allows users to leverage the problem-solving capabilities and access to world-class computing resources without the deployment and operational costs typically associated with technologies such as supercomputers.

Features of  Fujitsu Cloud Service HPC

The  Fujitsu Cloud Service HPC  offers users access to the PRIMEHPC FX1000, Fujitsu’s supercomputer model, which uses technologies such as the world’s most powerful supercomputer, Fugaku.

In addition, Fujitsu offers support services that come standard with a range of software and libraries to help customers implement HPC. On the operational side, Fujitsu also provides performance tuning and app analysis services to support customers who focus on research and analysis:

1. On-demand HPC services for anytime access to high-performance computing

Computing nodes 1, login nodes, job scheduler, storage, and application software for HPC are set up in advance (users don’t need to build their HPC environment, prepare the necessary data for their analysis). Users only pay for what they need.

2. Professional operational and technical support to ensure ease of use

Fujitsu offers technical support based on Fujitsu’s decades of operational experience in high-performance computing, including the know-how gained through the development of the supercomputer Fugaku (to support customers with no prior knowledge to get the most value from HPC, through assistance with installing software and libraries and tuning services). It also offers the development of HPC usage plans tailored to customers’ business plans.

3. High compatibility with the supercomputer Fugaku to accelerate R&D and use cutting-edge technologies in society

Research results generated on the supercomputer Fugaku can be easily transferred to CaaS services to accelerate practical applications in society (CPU, job scheduler, file system, compiler, application software, and API are available on Fugaku). Users planning large-scale analysis and research projects can migrate to Fugaku in the future while maintaining the same usability.

Outlook

Building on the new “CaaS” service portfolio, Fujitsu is planning test runs with organizations and companies to optimize designs for the manufacturing industry and drug development for pharmaceutical companies.

In addition, Fujitsu aims to solve various societal problems by helping customers manage, digitize and integrate ever-increasing amounts of complex data in their enterprise through secure 5G and beyond 5G networks and advanced AI, digital annealer, and quantum computing technologies for real-time processing of digital data.

“Fugaku was designed as a supercomputer using the latest high-performance computing technology. It is used in R&D with the aim of realizing DX and Society 5.0 to contribute to the fulfillment of the various SDGs. In the last two years, 149 companies have already used Fugaku in 48 use cases, mainly in manufacturing – including in trial operation before full implementation,” says Satoshi Matsuoka, Director of the Center for Computational Science at RIKEN. “Demand for the technological capabilities offered by Fugaku continues to grow and coincides with the successful use cases of moving to the cloud. We are working with Fujitsu to make CaaS highly compatible with Fugaku, to support such requests. We expect CaaS to become an important service to quickly connect research and development on Fugaku with industrial use and practical implementation in society. Going forward, we will work with Fujitsu to create further synergies between Fugaku and this new service so that its capabilities can be seamlessly deployed in the cloud.”