TOKYO, April 5, 2022 — Fujitsu announced today (April 6 in Tokyo) the launch of its new “Fujitsu Computing as a Service (CaaS)” portfolio of services to accelerate digital transformation (DX) and empower customers worldwide worldwide by providing access to some of the world’s most advanced computing technologies via the cloud for business purposes.
The new service includes advanced computing resources like Fujitsu’s quantum-inspired Digital Annealer technology, the computing technology 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 start providing these new services in the Japanese market from October 2022 with a global rollout in international regions such as Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas.
Initially, Fujitsu will launch pre-orders for “Fujitsu Cloud Service HPC”, which offers the computing power of “Fujitsu Supercomputer PRIMEHPC FX1000”, which shares the same CPU at the core of the Fugaku supercomputer. Fujitsu will begin sales of the service for consumers and organizations in Japan from April 6, 2022, with delivery from October. In the coming months, Fujitsu will further add services for its Digital Annealer technology and AI cloud services to its service portfolio to provide further value-added services that seamlessly integrate various solutions.
Vivek Mahajan, Chief Technology Officer (Corporate Executive Officer, SEVP) Fujitsu Limited, commented: “CaaS will provide customers with seamless access to public cloud services to meet rapidly growing IT demands, leveraging cutting-edge advanced computing technologies. from Fujitsu. Going forward, we are looking to further expand the portfolio with access to technologies such as quantum computing. This decision marks an important step towards the democratization of high-performance and quantum computing and will play an important role in achieving Fujitsu’s goal: “to make the world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation. “.
To achieve the vision of a more sustainable world embodied by its global trademark “FUJITSU Uvance”, Fujitsu will leverage CaaS to promote the commercial use of a range of advanced computing technologies, which have so far been widely limited to applications in an academic setting due in part to prohibitive capital costs and implementation and operational burdens.
Fujitsu expects CaaS to help solve societal problems, as well as persistent challenges in a wide range of industries, including finance, manufacturing, distribution, logistics, disaster prevention (including earthquake prediction earthquakes and tsunamis) and medical fields such as drug discovery and gene therapy.
Democratization of high-performance computing: lowering the barrier to entry
Cost remains a major obstacle for many companies and organizations that want to apply advanced computing technologies such as Fujitsu’s Digital Annealer and high performance computing (HPC) in their business. To address this issue, Fujitsu will provide users with easy access to a range of services as part of its new CaaS portfolio, enabling users across a wide range of industries to easily harness the power offered by advanced computing technologies. Fujitsu.
Introduction to CaaS
The CaaS portfolio of cloud services represents one of the main pillars of Fujitsu’s “Uvance” brand to create a sustainable world and solve societal problems through digital innovation.
The service portfolio will offer comprehensive customer support, including software, a service integration platform, as well as consulting and tuning services that run on the cloud. This allows users to take advantage of problem-solving capabilities and access to world-class computing resources without the deployment and operating costs typically associated with technologies such as supercomputers.
Features of “Fujitsu Cloud Service HPC”
“Fujitsu Cloud Service HPC” allows users to access the PRIMEHPC FX1000, Fujitsu’s supercomputer model that uses technologies from the design of the world’s most powerful supercomputer, Fugaku.
Fujitsu further provides support services that come standard with a suite of software and libraries to help customers deploy HPC. Operationally, Fujitsu also offers performance tuning and application analysis services to support customers who focus on research and analysis.
1. On-demand HPC services for anytime access to high-performance computing– Compute(1) nodes, connection nodes, task scheduler, storage and application software for HPC are configured in advance (users do not have to create their own HPC environment and do not only have to prepare the data necessary for their analysis)– Users only pay for what they need
2. Professional operational and technical support to ensure ease of use– Technical support based on Fujitsu’s decades of operational expertise in high-performance computing, including know-how acquired through the development of the Fugaku supercomputer (helping customers without prior knowledge to get the most out of HPC through technical support in software and library installation and tuning services)– Development of HPC usage plans tailored to customer business plans
3. High compatibility with Fugaku supercomputer to accelerate R&D and deployment of advanced technologies in society– Simple transfer of research results generated on Fugaku supercomputer to CaaS services to speed up practical application in society (Fugaku common CPU, task scheduler, file system, compiler, application software and APIs are available)– Users planning large-scale analysis and research projects can migrate to Fugaku in the future with the same operability
Future plans
Building on its new portfolio of “CaaS” services, Fujitsu plans to conduct trials with organizations and enterprises to optimize designs for the manufacturing industry and optimize drug discovery for pharmaceutical companies.
Fujitsu further aims to contribute to solving various social issues by helping customers manage, digitize and integrate ever-increasing amounts of complex data into their business via secure 5G and beyond 5G networks and to provide technologies advances in AI, Digital Annealer and quantum computing for real-time processing of digital data.
“Fugaku was developed as a supercomputer with the latest high-performance computing technology and is used in research and development with the aim of realizing DX and Society 5.0 to help achieve various SDGs,” said Satoshi Matsuoka, Director from the Center for Computational Sciences, RIKEN. “Over the past two years, 149 companies have already used Fugaku in 48 use cases, mostly in manufacturing, including trial operations before large-scale implementation. Demand for the technology capabilities offered by Fugaku continues to grow, coinciding with successful use cases in the move to the cloud. We are working with Fujitsu to make its CaaS highly compatible with Fugaku to meet these requirements, and we hope that CaaS will become an important service to quickly connect R&D on Fugaku to industrial use and practical implementation in society. . Going forward, we will work with Fujitsu to enhance Fugaku’s synergy with this new service to deliver its capabilities seamlessly in the cloud.
(1) Node: The smallest unit of computing resources that an operating system can run on a supercomputer.
About Fujitsu
Fujitsu is the Japanese leader in information and communication technologies (ICT) offering a complete range of technological products, solutions and services. Around 126,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society together with our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenue of 3.6 trillion yen ($34 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021. For more information, see www.fujitsu.com.
Source: Fujitsu
