Archived content
NOTE: this is an archived page and the content is likely to be out of date.
Fujitsu-Developed "ABCI" System Takes 5th Place in TOP500, 8th in Green500 Supercomputer Rankings
Fujitsu Limited
Fujitsu today announces that its AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure (ABCI) system has placed 5th in the world, and 1st in Japan, in the TOP500 international performance ranking of supercomputers. ABCI has also taken 8th place in the world in Green500, which ranks outstanding energy saving performance. Fujitsu developed ABCI, Japan’s fastest open AI infrastructure featuring a large-scale, power-saving cloud platform geared toward AI processing, based on a tender issued by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST).
These rankings were announced on June 25 (Japan time) at ISC 2018, an international conference on high performance computing (HPC) held in Germany. TOP500 evaluates and ranks the top 500 computer systems in the world by computational processing speed. Green500 ranks the TOP500-listed supercomputers to offer excellent examples of power consumption performance.
ABCI is a large-scale cloud platform focused on AI applications, consisting of 1,088 Fujitsu Server PRIMERGY CX2570 M4 x86 servers, each equipped with two Intel® Xeon® Scalable family processors and four NVIDIA® Tesla® V100 accelerators, the latest GPU computing card.
In the TOP500 performance testing, ABCI achieved a LINPACK performance(1) of 19.88 petaflops(2) using its 1,088 computational nodes, due to application acceleration technology and other technologies developed by Fujitsu and Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. in their experience in HPC development. Through the use of such technologies as performance balance optimization as well as overlapping optimization of computational processing and communications processing, Fujitsu was able to not only improve GPU computational efficiency, but also optimize communications processing between servers, eliciting maximum hardware performance.
In addition, ABCI achieved a performance value of 12.05 gigaflops(3) per watt in the Green500 rankings, earning world-class recognition not only for performance, but also as a supercomputer system with excellent energy efficiency.
AIST plans to begin full-scale operations with ABCI from August 2018. As a type of open AI infrastructure geared to deliver the fastest AI processing in Japan, ABCI's computational resources will be available to a broad range of organizations, from research institutions and universities to research by private companies, rapidly advancing the use of cutting-edge AI technology by industry and contributing to the creation of technologies useful for Japanese industry and society.
Image 1: ABCI's compute node racks
Image 2: The AI datacenter housing ABCI
TOP500 and Green500 Rankings Announced at ISC18
Endorsement
"AI is transforming virtually every industry. ABCI, powered by over 4,300 NVIDIA Volta Tensor Core GPUs, is one of the largest GPU accelerated supercomputer systems for AI. Volta Tensor Core GPUs, the engine for modern AI, is designed for the future of computing where deep learning is fused with traditional high-performance computing for accelerating scientific and industrial progress. ABCI will fuel AI adoption across Japan."
- Ian Buck, Vice President and general manager of Accelerated Computing at NVIDIA
Related Websites
Fujitsu Receives Order for Japan's Fastest Supercomputer System for AI Applications (press release, October 10, 2017)
-
[1] LINPACK Performance
A program developed by J. Dongarra, Ph.D., of the University of Tennessee, for solving simultaneous linear equations using regular matrix calculations (a direct method of finding a solution). It is used as a benchmark program in creating the TOP500 list. It is known for easily producing performance close to the peak performance of the hardware.
-
[2] Petaflops
Quadrillion floating point operations per second.
-
[3] Gigaflops
Billion floating point operations per second.
About Fujitsu
Fujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company, offering a full range of technology products, solutions, and services. Approximately 140,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE: 6702) reported consolidated revenues of 4.1 trillion yen (US $39 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2018. For more information, please see www.fujitsu.com.
All company or product names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Information provided in this press release is accurate at time of publication and is subject to change without advance notice.
Date: 26 June, 2018
City: Tokyo
Company:
Fujitsu Limited
