"The solution enables visualization while keeping data on ITO, the new supercomputer system. Users have complimented it, saying that research throughputs have certainly improved. The system has enabled us to provide user support effectively. When a fourth-year medical student at our university started a venture that analyzes medical images, the student used ITO for research and software development during the startup phase."

Dr. Kenji Ono, Director of RIIT and Professor, Kyushu University

Established in 1911, Kyushu University has more than 100 years of history and tradition. As a pivotal university that represents Japan, it has approximately 19,000 students (including roughly 2,200 international students), approximately 8,000 teaching staff members, 12 schools, 18 graduate schools, and 16 faculties as well as one of the largest university hospitals in Japan. Having marked its 100th anniversary in 2011, the university advocates an educational philosophy of continuing reforms autonomously, ensuring quality education internationally, and serving as one of the best research and educational institutions that repeatedly and energetically tackles issues for the future under the slogan of making the leap to become one of the top 100 universities globally in every field. RIIT supports initiatives to use ICT to realize the aims of the slogan. Regarding this role, Dr. Kenji Ono, Director of RIIT, said, "We promote education and research activities that use cutting-edge ICT and return the fruit of such activities throughout the university. In addition, RIIT's supercomputer system contributes to strengthening the foundation of academic research in Japan and to developing new academic research projects by providing its computational resources to internal and external researchers through various programs implemented by RIIT as well as JHPCN ^{(Note 1)} and HPCI ^{(Note 2)}."

In October 2017, the new supercomputer system ITO was launched on the Ito Campus, one of the university's education and research bases. The system, which Fujitsu was commissioned to build, is an ambitious project that aims to realize a new, internationally distinguished leading-edge concept of integrating the traditional high-performance computing (HPC) field with the data science field, which uses machine learning and big data.

Note 1: JHPCN
Joint Usage/Research Center for Interdisciplinary Large-scale Information Infrastructures. This is a network-based joint usage/research center in which the supercomputer facilities of Hokkaido University, Tohoku University, the University of Tokyo, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Nagoya University, Kyoto University, Osaka University, and Kyushu University serve as supporting hubs and the Information Technology Center of the University of Tokyo functions as the core hub.

Note 2: HPCI
High Performance Computing Infrastructure. This is an innovative computing environment that meets various user needs by connecting the K computer with other major supercomputers deployed at universities and research institutes across Japan via a network.

Regarding the key points when preparing the RFP for ITO, Dr. Nanri said, "We selected GPUs suited for the data science field and formulated the specifications as well as CPUs used in the HPC field could also deliver sufficient performance with the limited available power. We also focused on power monitoring to collect information to improve power efficiency and lower power consumption. In addition, we included a provision on coordination with public clouds so that we could temporarily scale out when too many computational resources are consumed due to busy workloads.

In April 2017, Fujitsu responded to the university's RFP and was selected in open bidding. ITO's backend system is comprised of more than 2,000 Fujitsu PRIMERGY x86 servers in a hybrid configuration of CPUs and GPUs, which achieves approximately 10 Pflops of overall theoretical peak performance, a top-class record for Japan. In addition, the know-how cultivated during the K computer project, including the adoption of FUJITSU Software Technical Computing Suite (HPC middleware that helps operation of large-scale systems efficiently with system and job management features) and FEFS (a high-capacity, high-performance, and highly reliable distributed file system used by many domestic and overseas users) is utilized.

Fujitsu UNCAI (integrated cloud management software for HPC) is used so that the frontend (164 servers) can share storage with the backend, thus enabling a hosting service. UNCAI's resource reservation feature automatically sets up the resources, OSs, and applications that users want to use at the specified times.

To meet the needs of the university as it works on the new concept of integrating the data science field with the HPC field, Fujitsu adopted the optimal system configuration made up of not only Fujitsu's but also other vendors' products. The university appreciated Fujitsu's technological and comprehensive strengths that enabled rapid construction that took only six months in spite of a multi-vendor project.