Abstracts of Magazine FUJITSU 2014-1 (Vol. 65, No. 1)

Special Issue: Technical Computing

• Studies for Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Disasters Using the K computer

Japan has often been hit by serious natural disasters. To prevent and mitigate disasters, it is imperative to take effective measures quickly. JAMSTEC has embarked on "Strategic Programs for Innovative Research: Advanced Prediction Researches for Natural Disaster Prevention and Reduction (Field 3)", in collaboration with universities and research bodies in Japan. In Field 3, large-scale natural disaster simulations on the K computer have been conducted. We have already obtained good results such as acquiring an ability to make highly precise forecasts of Madden–Julian oscillations, obtaining high-precision tornado simulation results, carrying out advanced simulations on seismic motion, conducting high-resolution tsunami simulations related to a Nankai Trough quake, carrying out high-resolution seismic response analysis, and conducting multi-agent simulations for evacuation actions.

• MEMS Project in Saudi Arabia: Initiative of Global Solution Business

The MODON Environment Management System (MEMS) project started from a feasibility study on eco-industrial cities as part of the "Fiscal Year 2011 Project Commissioned to Research and Promote Infrastructure-related System Export (Business Feasibility Study on Smart Communities in the Global Market)" run by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). We won an order for the MEMS project to construct ambient air, emission air, and ambient and emission water systems at three major industrial cities of MODON, which means city in Arabic, through the feasibility study that lasted one and a half years. This construction was carried out in collaboration with Fuji Electric, Metawater, Eco-Analysis, Mizuho Bank and experts in many different field from academia and the Kawasaki-city. This paper describes how we won the order and how we carried out the project, and gives an overview of the system, current project status and future vision.

• Environmental Monitoring System for Map Ta Phut Industrial Estate in Thailand

Fujitsu has installed a VOCs monitoring and environmental information management system (VM-EIMS) for the Industrial Estate Authority of Thailand and Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. The system is intended to improve air quality in Map Ta Phut. It monitors 19 kinds of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), 10 odor-causing compounds, and ozone. We improved the analysis function and the information publishing function of the system, introducing technological concepts such as "risk assessment" and "risk communication" in environmental risk management. The system can carry out an advanced simulation to predict the diffusion of air pollutant. In addition to installing the system, we held several technical training sessions for researchers in order to develop their environmental simulation skills as technology transfer activities. And also, the system publishes information on air quality such as measured data and simulation results on the Web and receives information about the state of pollution in various areas from Internet users. This paper describes Fujitsu's efforts for and achievements in these activities.

• Satellite-based Disaster Management System for Asia-Pacific Region

In 2005, Sentinel Asia was proposed as a disaster management support system for Asia at the Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum (APRSAF). Sentinel Asia is an international project and the participants (at the time) were 23 agencies from 14 countries and four international organizations. The aim was to reduce the number of victims and social loss caused by natural disasters in the Asia-Pacific Region. For Sentinel Asia, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is playing an active role as the secretariat in order to contribute to the Asia-Pacific Region. The Satellite-based Disaster Management System for the Asia-Pacific Region "Sentinel Asia STEP 2" (hereinafter the "Sentinel Asia System") provides disaster prevention agencies in disaster-affected countries with disaster-related information, including data on the conditions on the ground, obtained by earth observation satellites, in the event of disasters. Fujitsu started working on its development in 2008, and it has been in operation since March 31, 2010. This paper presents an overview of the Sentinel Asia System developed by Fujitsu for making use of information and communications technology (ICT) to support disaster monitoring in the Asia-Pacific Region and describes applications of the technology. The results of using the Sentinel Asia System are also presented.

• Supercomputer System for Numerical Weather Prediction in Central Weather Bureau of Taiwan

The Central Weather Bureau (CWB) is a government agency that is responsible for weather forecasting and monitoring all across Taiwan (Republic of China), and its activities include detecting earthquakes and tsunamis. CWB's numerical weather prediction system, or NWP, will be using FUJITSU Supercomputer PRIMEHPC FX-10 servers, and the phasing in of this supercomputing system will take place from 2012 to 2014 in three phases (first to third stage). These sales of the FX-10 servers (first phase) to the CWB were the first such overseas shipment for this new supercomputing model, which was developed based on the echnology of the K computer.

• Development of Supercomputer System Dedicated for ALMA Project: ACA Correlator System

The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) in National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) is promoting the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) project on a plateau near the Atacama Desert in Chile jointly with U.S. and European observatories. The Fujitsu Group developed a supercomputer, the Atacama Compact Array (ACA) correlator system, dedicated to processing data from large radio telescopes. This system consists of a correlator control system comprised of 35 PC servers (FUJITSU Server PRIMERGY) and the ACA correlator developed by Fujitsu Advanced Engineering (FAE). The system meets stringent requirements including the need to process in real time huge amounts of radio signal data (512 billion pieces/second) from telescope antenna at a calculation speed of 120 tera operations per second (TOPS) and operating stably in the toughest environment (altitude of 5000 m, atmospheric pressure of 0.5 atm). This system has adopted cost-efficient field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology to realize the computing performance and a disk-less system for stable operations. The system has been tested for long-time operation in a low pressure environment and it can be maintained remotely. Test operations started in 2011 and, after a pilot observation period, the system proved to be suitable for use in ALMA, which officially began in 2013. This paper describes the entire concept of the ACA correlator system and approaches to realizing its high computing performance and stable operation.

• Approach to Utilizing High-performance Computing at HPC Wales

HPC Wales has been providing high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure to local small and medium-sized enterprises and universities for future business development, research innovation and nurturing of human resources for HPC domain. This project is carried out by HPC Wales in collaboration with the UK government, Welsh government, EU and Fujitsu. In particular, Fujitsu has provided HPC system infrastructure, transferred knowledge and collaborated in research with HPC Wales. In this paper, we explain the HPC infrastructure in HPC Wales and its approach to utilizing HPC technology for business development.

• Applications of Molecular Simulation Software SCIGRESS in Industry and University

SCIGRESS is computer simulation software developed by Fujitsu that is capable of simulating the behavior of atoms and molecules. The drug design phase in the pharmaceutical industry requires experiments to verify the effectiveness of a design; however, it takes considerable time and costs if all the required experiments are performed without computer simulation. SCIGRESS can perform virtual experiments on a computer to help practical experiments, resulting in time and costs savings. SCIGRESS is often used for education in teaching organic chemistry in universities. In particular, students tend to misunderstand what the resonance of aromatic compounds actually means, only by hearing lectures and reading textbooks. SCIGRESS can visualize aromatic compounds with 3D graphics and help people to have a correct understanding. This paper describes two applications of SCIGRESS for drug degradation prediction by Sanofi S.A. in France, a major pharmaceutical company in the world, and for teaching chemistry in Ulm University, a public university in Germany.

• Building of System to Monitor Environmental Radioactivity Level

The Japanese government required a system to monitor the environmental radioactivity level and protect the children living in Fukushima from radiation, and requested it in the second supplementary budget for 2012. Fujitsu accepted an order for this system from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in December 2011. This system was transferred to the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) in April 2013. We finished building this system in 75 days, and started running it partially in mid-February 2012, and completely in April 2012. Now, we are keeping the system running stably. We received the Good Design Award for it. In this paper, we describe the problems (short development period, suitable Web design, maintaining system response) we faced in developing this system. We also describe how we solved them by using cloud services, dividing up parts of the system for data processing, using Web designer and open source software (OSS), and using the Ajax (asynchronous JavaScript + XML) method.

• Practical use of FX10 Supercomputer System (Oakleaf-FX) of Information Technology Center, The University of Tokyo

Information Technology Center, The University of Tokyo (ICT/UT) is a core organization of "Joint Usage/Research Center for Interdisciplinary Large-Scale Information Infrastructures" which consists of eight academic supercomputer centers in Japan. There, Oakleaf-FX, a system centered on Fujitsu's PRIMEHPC FX10 (76 800 CPU cores,) which has been developed by further enhancing the technology applied to the K computer to realize both high performance and superior energy efficiency, started operations in April 2012 and achieved a performance of 1 PFLOPS (ranked 18th in the world) in June 2012. Supercomputing Division of ITC/UT provides services for operations of supercomputer systems and supporting more than 1500 users from both of inside and outside of the university for various cutting-edge R&D and education activities. Fujitsu is working to develop products with high application execution performance, and create user-friendly systems that can work in various operational environments and that are energy efficient. This paper presents a system overview of Oakleaf-FX and the issues to be overcome to develop supercomputers, together with measures for solving them. The results of various studies making use of Oakleaf-FX have been reported and this paper reports on four fields as successful examples of its application.

• Takeda Pharmaceutical's E-Notebook Project Report

Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited faces three problems: controlling cost and time in activities to discover drugs, finding a solution to patent disputes, and helping our customers to observe compliance. To solve these problems, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited and Fujitsu Limited cooperated to establish E-Notebook and its related effective systems, which are a long-term signature system, a system to check regulatory controls on chemical compounds, and a chemical compound database system, These can be used to thoroughly computerize information on drug discovery. As a result, we have improved systems to input and record data in compound synthesis studies, helped organizations observe compliance by protecting against synthesis of illegal chemical compounds, and made it possible to establish evidence on the date of a drug's discovery with an electronic certificate. We have improved the quality of our customers' drug discovery activities by realizing measures to resolve patent disputes, helped them observe compliance, and improved the operations of our customers' scientists.

• Application Examples of Electromagnetic Wave Simulation Software "Poynting" in Manufacturing Industry

It is becoming hard to produce designs when developing electronic equipment because of advances in packaging technology and strict regulations. It is specifically difficult to conform to EMC standards in the design phase. And this is a factor that causes development costs to increase. By implementing a simulation for virtual evaluation in the design phase of a printed circuit board (PCB), it becomes possible to significantly reduce the cost of measurement and evaluation. Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) measures in the design phase can be implemented by performing electromagnetic wave analysis of the whole model of a product comprised of a PCB, wiring and housing. To meet this need, Fujitsu has developed the electromagnetic wave simulation software "Poynting." We sell it and provide support for it. Poynting is capable of rapidly carrying out calculations in a large-scale model using a PC cluster. It is suitable for analyzing noise in electronic equipment. This paper describes the features and advantages of Poynting. It also describes application examples of carrying out electromagnetic interference (EMI) analysis on a power electronics device, electromagnetic wave analysis of a PCB and electro-static discharge (ESD) analysis of a cell phone.