Fujitsu and IHPC enter R&D partnership  
ConvergenceAsia staff
19/01/2010

Fujitsu and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)’s Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC) have announced an R&D partnership to jointly develop petascale computing.

Petascale computing, using sophisticated supercomputers able to undertake a quadrillion (1015) calculations per second, will provide unprecedented computing capability to solve highly complex and challenging scientific and engineering problems.

A joint team of 20 IHPC and Fujitsu researchers will develop scalable algorithms for petascale computing in the areas of computational fluid dynamics and materials science.

The team will harness the compute power of Fujitsu supercomputer system comprising a cluster of Fujitsu PRIMERGY BX900 blade servers with a peak performance of over 35 teraflops (TFlops) and 91.8 per cent efficiency with LINPACK program.

This is the first installation of a Fujitsu PRIMERGY BX900-based supercomputer outside of Japan. This system, housed at A*STAR’s Computational Resource Centre (A*CRC) at Fusionopolis, will be amongst the top tier of supercomputer sites in the world and the most powerful in Southeast Asia.

Said Lim Chuan Poh, Chairman, A*STAR, “This partnership will enable both parties to develop further capabilities to drive advances in high-performance computing.”

The R&D in petascale computing applications will enable a very high degree of fidelity and accuracy, in the study of highly complex real and engineering systems.

“Petascale computing is the new frontier in high-performance computing and will open avenues to solve complex problems in the physical and life sciences, as well as engineering. IHPC’s expertise in computational science and engineering complements Fujitsu’s skills in developing new architectures,” said Dr Raj Thampuran, Executive Director, IHPC.

This know-how will lead to innovative and cutting-edge solutions for advanced applications in diverse areas such as chemicals to infocommunications and electronics. It can also address a wider range of large-scale scenarios from weather modelling to studies on infectious diseases.

“Since we started operations in Singapore, we have positioned the country as the showcase for the rest of Asia by introducing the best IT solutions and practices from our global experience to local customers and industry partners,” added Masaki Kajiyama, President of Singapore operations at Fujitsu Asia.

“This collaboration is the latest milestone in a series of contributions towards Singapore’s continued economic success, and demonstrates our ability to value-add to the nation through strategic partnerships with industry prime movers such as A*STAR,” he said.

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