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Cutting-Edge R&D


FSTJ 2010-1 Cover Image

2010-1 (vol.46, No.1)


While continuing to cultivate the R&D of cutting-edge technologies that drive the evolution of the information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure, Fujitsu Laboratories plans to utilize its global system to create ubiquitous technologies to revolutionize business activities and personal lifestyles, materials and device technologies that give birth to new value, and technologies that contribute to environmental and energy solutions. This special issue introduces some of these R&D activities together with Fujitsu Laboratories' R&D strategy and activities at overseas sites.


2010-1 (vol.46, No.1) Contents

1. Preface (498 KB)
The dramatic progress of the information-communications revolution based on the Internet is bringing about massive and sudden changes in social trends and industrial structures. To stay one step ahead of these changes and continue to provide new value and solutions to our customers and future society, Fujitsu Laboratories is working toward becoming a research organization of the 21st century. ---[Kazuo Murano, President of Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd.]
2. R&D Strategy of Fujitsu Laboratories—Toward a Human-Centric Networked Society— (889 KB)
Since Fujitsu brought the message "Everything on the Internet" to the world more than ten years ago, Fujitsu Laboratories has made progress in information technology, leading to innovations in services and business models. Fujitsu Laboratories holds to the vision of a "human-centric networked society". Enormous amounts of data and knowledge will be acquired by sensors, processed by Cloud computing, transformed into new forms of value, and fed back to the real world to bring about big social and business changes. "What Mankind Can Dream, Technology Can Achieve" is our mission. We are going to innovate ourselves as 21st century laboratories, contribute to the creation of the human-centric networked society, and offer a fruitful and hopeful future to the whole world. ---[Seiichi Yoshikawa, Shigeru Sasaki]
3. Fujitsu Laboratories Global Activities (1.21 MB )
Fujitsu Laboratories has established three laboratories in the USA, China, and Europe and has been building a global R&D system. Each overseas laboratory is developing technologies utilizing the region's characteristics and working with local universities and research institutes. The activities that have taken root in the region were promoted in order to start up R&D functions at the initial establishment. Since 2005, R&D management has been shifted to focus on outputs more strongly in harmony with all laboratories worldwide and on open innovation. Overseas laboratories have established deep relationships with the local communities and benefit from the outstanding environments and talents in those regions. They are carrying out R&D and business incubations and producing remarkable outputs. ---[Hitoshi Matsumoto, Takeshi Yamamura, Fumihiro Maruyama]
4. Environmental Innovation Activities of Fujitsu Laboratories (844 KB)
Effective addressing of global environmental problems is considered to be one of the most important issues for ongoing corporate activities. In its fourth assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that emissions of greenhouse gases like CO2, if left unchecked, could cause the average global temperature to rise by 2–6˚C by the end of the 21st century, leaving the future of mankind at risk. Innovation by information technology (IT) is indispensable in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050, and Fujitsu Laboratories initiated the development of diverse technologies for reducing the environmental load. Part of Fujitsu's development policy is to introduce its environmental perspectives into the R&D roadmap and to evaluate the development targets by life cycle assessment in order to predict the environmental load reductions beforehand. In addition, Fujitsu promotes total technology development from materials/devices to system/solutions, aiming at effective energy saving by integrating elemental technologies and building an ecological value chain. This paper outlines the latest activities of Fujitsu Laboratories toward environmental innovations. ---[Ei Yano]
5. Multipoint Temperature Measurement Technology using Optical Fiber (919 KB)
Energy consumption in data centers is increasing dramatically as the information technology (IT) infrastructure provides higher speeds and capacities and the deployment of IT equipment expands. In a data center, the percentage of energy consumed by air conditioning is high at about 40%, and reducing this energy use has become a major issue against the background of global warming. To make detailed temperature measurements with the aim of achieving energy-efficient data centers, we have developed multipoint measuring technology to increase the spatial resolution by more than twice that of existing technology. This uses a new algorithm for correcting signal processing output from temperature-distribution measuring equipment that utilizes Raman-scattering light in an optical fiber. We have also developed technology for fast and reliable laying of optical fiber on server racks. These technologies enable accurate and detailed measurement of temperature distributions in data centers, which should in turn lead to optimal air conditioning and an energy-saving effect. ---[Fumio Takei, Kazushi Uno, Takeo Kasajima]
6. Application of Environmental Load Analysis to Branch Office Monitoring (849 KB)
Greenhouse gas emissions in Japan have increased by 9.0% from 1990, which is the base year of the Kyoto Protocol, and those from the commercial and other sectors including office buildings are especially large. In those sectors, greenhouse gas emissions caused by the use of information technology (IT) are large, so reductions require adequate IT solutions. Fujitsu is proposing a branch office monitoring system that provides operation, operator, and space analysis to find problems in branch offices and improve the workflow and IT systems. Furthermore, we provide environmental load analysis developed by Fujitsu Laboratories to assess the environmental-load reduction effect achieved by introducing IT solutions in the field. This paper introduces a case study of environmental load analysis applied to branch office monitoring at a branch of a bank. ---[Katsuhito Nakazawa, Hidefumi Ueda, Kouta Nishii]
7. High-Quality Prosody Generation in Mandarin Text-to-Speech System (1.24 MB )
A text-to-speech (TTS) synthesizer is a computer-based system that can automatically read text aloud. Fujitsu is developing a Mandarin TTS system using state-of-the-art technologies. The prosodic structure of synthesized text provides important information for making synthetic speech produced by a TTS system more natural and understandable. This paper describes a global probability estimation method for predicting prosodic words, which are the lowest constituent of the prosodic structure. Experimental results for this method are very promising. They are better than those for our previous binary prosodic tree method in terms of both accuracy and memory cost. ---[Qing Guo, Jie Zhang, Nobuyuki Katae, Hao Yu]
8. Data Loss Prevention Technologies (1.36 MB )
Although data loss has become an important problem that needs to be solved in many types of organizations, possible routes of data loss have become complicated and numerous, making countermeasures difficult to develop. Fujitsu Laboratories is developing data loss prevention technologies that integrate know-how related to mobile devices, data searching technologies, and security technologies like encryption that have been under development at Fujitsu for some time. These data loss prevention technologies are undergoing verification and testing within the company with an eye towards commercialization. This paper introduces three technologies that will enable information to be used in an expanded workplace with guaranteed safety, without placing a burden on the user. The expanded workplace will extend beyond the borders of a company to include offline work at a customer's office and at other organizations including collaborating companies. The paper begins by introducing a solution for moving data safely outside the company using a novel universal serial bus (USB) memory device. Next, it presents an E-mail filter for preventing the erroneous sending of E-mail containing sensitive information. Finally, it describes document management technology for protecting a document across its entire lifecycle including editing. It also touches upon data loss prevention technologies in the coming era of software as a service (SaaS) and Cloud computing. ---[Tomoyoshi Takebayashi, Hiroshi Tsuda, Takayuki Hasebe, Ryusuke Masuoka]
9. 10 Gigabit Ethernet Switch Blade for Large-Scale Blade Servers (1,011 KB)
The introduction of blade servers for diverse applications is expanding rapidly. The switch blade—a key network component of the blade server—must provide high performance to accommodate growing data-communication demands generated by network consolidation as in Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), have a compact, low-power-consumption design, and have switch control software optimized for blade server systems. To meet these requirements, we have developed a 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) switch blade suitable for large-scale blade servers. This paper focuses on the 10GbE switch LSI MB86C69, whose features have been optimized for blade servers, the high-speed transceiver circuit integrated into this LSI, and the switch control software for easy network configuration of switch blades. ---[Yoichi Koyanagi, Tadafusa Niinomi, Yasushi Umezawa]
10. Digital Coherent Receiver Technology for 100-Gb/s Optical Transport Systems (1.41 MB )
Digital coherent receivers are expected to be the most important building block of 100-Gb/s optical transport systems. As a platform for evaluating their real-time operational stability and thus helping to realize product-level reliability, Fujitsu Laboratories and Fujitsu have fabricated a test circuit to implement basic algorithms such as carrier phase recovery and optical frequency offset compensation. The experimental results showed an excellent bit error ratio performance that is only 1 dB away from the theoretical limit. ---[Jens C. Rasmussen, Takeshi Hoshida, Hisao Nakashima]
11. Technology for WiFi/Bluetooth and WiMAX Coexistence (852 KB)
Mobile Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (Mobile WiMAX) is useful as next-generation wireless broadband access technology based on OFDMA. For it to proliferate, the radio interference between WiMAX, which is operated on the 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz bands, and WiFi/Bluetooth, which is located on the Industrial Scientific and Medical (ISM) band (2.4 GHz), needs to be resolved. Fujitsu has developed some proprietary coexistence technology as an effective way to do this, until a countermeasure of enhancing the IEEE specification is deployed in a few years. Our developed coexistence technology does not require any modifications to be made to the current specifications for backward compatibility. It works by using automatic repeat requests (ARQ). There were concerns about the technology's adverse effect on system throughput, but no such effect was observed when operating at 75% of system capacity or less. We evaluated this in a simulation. This paper describes the issues regarding WiFi/Bluetooth and WiMAX coexistence, and Fujitsu's proprietary coexistence technology. ---[Taiji Kondo, Hiroshi Fujita, Makoto Yoshida, Tamio Saito]
12. User Plane and Control Plane Separation Framework for Home Base Stations (1.13 MB )
Home base stations (HBSs), which are considered to be useful extensions to mobile operators' networks, are a promising solution for many issues in mobile communication networks, such as coverage, capacity, and cost. They deliver a great user experience for services in the home or in office buildings using customers' broadband access for backhaul. However, connecting to the mobile operators' networks via the Internet brings uncertain delay and hence unreliability into the HBS access architecture, especially the impact on the handover between an HBS and the surrounding base stations. In this paper, we investigate the handover management performance in a typical HBS deployment scenario by analysing the handover procedure durations. A user plane and control plane separation framework is proposed to support uncoordinated HBS integration with the mobile network through unmanaged, generic Internet protocol networks. ---[Zhaojun Li, Mick Wilson]
13. Paper Encryption Technology (1.19 MB )
In Japan, since the Act on the Protection of Personal Information was fully enforced in April 2005, companies and other parties have developed various measures to prevent leaks of information. Such measures include preventing information leaks by not printing documents whenever possible, keeping logs of people who print documents, and using electronic watermark technology that can embed tracking information such as IDs in printed material. However, not printing documents may not be possible in some services and may be inconvenient. While electronic watermarks are useful for tracking people who have leaked information, they are not effective for preventing the information leaks themselves. To prevent information leaks while allowing documents to be printed, Fujitsu Laboratories has pioneered a paper encryption technology. With this technology, only those who know the password can access information that is encrypted and hidden in printed material. This report introduces an outline of our paper encryption technology together with its uses and areas of application. ---[Taizo Anan, Kensuke Kuraki, Jun Takahashi]
14. Wraparound View System for Motor Vehicles (1.21 MB )
The use of vehicle-mounted cameras, including one for the rearview monitor, has become increasingly popular recently. These cameras can help make driving easier and safer by reducing the number of blind spots around the vehicle. We have now developed a new wraparound view monitoring system that combines video images from four cameras and provides the driver with a full field of vision around the vehicle with no blind spots. This technology is built into a vehicle-mounted system, which consists of an MB86R01 System-on-a-Chip (SoC) graphics controller for automobiles supplied by Fujitsu Microelectronics Ltd. and a video processing chip FPGA that synchronizes the images from the four cameras and conducts multiplex synthesizing on those video images. The system is capable of processing the input video images at a rate of up to 30 ms per frame and showing the processed images to the driver. This technology thus can offer proper visual assistance to the driver in a variety of driving conditions, including when parking the vehicle, passing oncoming traffic on a narrow street, entering an intersection with poor visibility, and turning left or right. This paper describes our new wraparound view monitoring technology and its application to a vehicle-mounted system. ---[Seiya Shimizu, Jun Kawai, Hiroshi Yamada]
15. Graphene—Novel Material for Nanoelectronics (1.53 MB )
Graphene is a flat monolayer of carbon atoms with a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice, and many layers of it constitute graphite. Single-layer graphene has been discovered recently and found to have excellent electrical and thermal properties, making it a promising material for future electronics. We performed first-principle calculations which do not use empirical parameters and elucidated the electronic states of graphene under an electric field. We also clarified the electronic states of graphene at the interface with an electrode. We further simulated electron transport in graphene and found that it can be a channel material for high-speed and high-frequency transistors with a performance better than InP-HEMT. Moreover, we succeeded in synthesizing graphene and a composite structure consisting of graphene and vertically aligned carbon nanotubes on a substrate. In this paper, we describe our theoretical and experimental approaches aimed at future applications of graphene. ---[Shintaro Sato, Naoki Harada, Daiyu Kondo, Mari Ohfuchi]
16. Novel Applications of a Compact Binary Decision Diagram Library to Important Industrial Problems (881 KB)
Fujitsu Laboratories of America has, over the course of many years, worked to develop the frontier of binary decision diagram (BDD) technology under a project called ParDD. Our technology allows us to partition Boolean functions, represent them very compactly, and process them on a massively parallel computing platform. It has been used to create numerous applications in the field of electronic design automation. Recently under this project we have developed a novel BDD library where the storage requirement of each node closely tracks the total size of the stored representation. The compact nature of this data structure allows the solution of interesting problems to which BDDs have seldom been applied before. For example, we have used our library to create a compact inverted index, an essential matrix for indexing documents in any corpus, including the World Wide Web. We have also characterized its performance for Web query satisfaction in the context of Web searches as well as for the creation of compact representations of access control lists, a core component of Internet routers. ---[Stergios Stergiou, Jawahar Jain]
17. Multilevel Interconnect Technology for 45-nm Node CMOS LSIs (1.28 MB )
We have developed a novel porous low-k material called nano-clustering silica (NCS) which has a low dielectric constant (k = 2.25) and high mechanical strength (Young's modulus E = 10 GPa), and established manufacturing technology for 45-nm node multilevel Cu/Full-NCS interconnects which use NCS in trench layers and via layers to reduce the resistance-capacitance (RC) delay. Our Cu/Full-NCS interconnects are reliable enough to prevent damage to Cu interconnects by the mechanical stress that occurs in wire bonding, packaging, and other processes. This paper describes the characteristics of NCS and problems due to applying porous low-k material in multilevel interconnects. In addition, the performances and reliability of 45-nm node CMOS LSIs which use NCS are also explained. ---[Yoshihiro Nakata, Shirou Ozaki, Hiroshi Kudo]