NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #20/NN_1992_20.iso/spool/comp/sys/super/939

Text File | 1992-09-11 | 7.5 KB | 170 lines

Newsgroups: comp.sys.super
Path: sparky!uunet!ossi!news.fai.com!cliffc
From: [e-mail] (Clifford Chen)
Subject: Fujitsu Unvells Ultra High Speed Supercomputer
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Organization: Fujitsu America Inc.
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 02:17:12 GMT
Lines: 160


U.S. Contact:
Margaret Lasecke
Fujitsu America, Inc.
[phone]

  FUJITSU UNVEILS NEW ULTRA HIGH SPEED PARALLEL SUPERCOMPUTER


DEFINES NEW STANDARD FOR SUPERCOMPUTING

(San Jose, CA September 9, 1992) --  Fujitsu Limited today
announced that it has developed and will begin marketing
worldwide a new supercomputer capable of delivering unprecedented
peak performance of 355 gigaflops (355 billion floating point
operations per second) with only 222 processors -- a single
processor performance level ten times greater than any parallel
system available today.  The new system, called the VPP500 vector
parallel processor, will be available for commercial shipment in
September of 1993.

Commenting on the importance of this strategic product
introduction, Fujitsu's President Tadashi Sekizawa said,
"the new system will allow engineers and scientists to now
approach and solve some of the planet's most perplexing problems
known as Grand Challenges."  These include global climate model-
ing to study and solve pollution and ozone depletion, developing
alternative energy sources and human gene mapping to determine
cures to birth defects.  In addition, the system will be used to
solve industrial problems such as locating oil reserves through
computational analysis rather than costly "hit and miss" drilling
or by pharmaceutical companies to simulate chemical reactions for
new drug development on the computer, which may be too time
consuming to create in the chemistry lab.   He continued, "we are
very proud of this achievement.  We truly feel that this machine
will be used as a tool to effect positive changes in mankind's
surroundings."


Innovative Architecture

The Fujitsu VPP500 features vector processors used in a
parallel configuration to achieve the optimum performance of
parallel computing with the reliability and ease of programming
associated with more traditional vector processing.  The vector
parallel processing approach used in the VPP500 Series evolved
from the results of a feasibility study and joint research with a
Fujitsu supercomputer user.

The new system maximizes single processing unit performance,
packing 1.6 gigaflops performance into each processing element
(PE) used in the parallel configuration.  Each PE, which is the
size of a large briefcase delivers supercomputer performance in
and of itself.

Vital to optimal parallel processing performance is the
speed at which individual processors communicate with one
another.  Fujitsu has designed an innovative, proprietary
crossbar network.  This network allows simultaneous communication
to move between individual processing elements (PE) at a clip of
800 megabytes per second, making it the fastest data transfer
rate between processors as compared to other parallel processing
systems available today.

The VPP500 features distributed global memory space to offer
the user maximum system memory capacity of more than 55,000
megabytes, the highest in the industry.  This allows memory space
which is physically incorporated in each processing element to be
used for large capacity storage as well.  The net effect is that
programmers can use traditional programming methods to develop
high speed parallel programs easily.


Price/Performance Challenges Market Leader

Owing to its breakthroughs in semiconductor and system pack-
aging and cooling technologies, the Fujitsu VPP500 will set new
standards of price/performance.  System pricing begins at approx-
imately $10 million.  The large scale integrated (LSI) circuits
in the System mark the world's first large scale use of gallium
arsenide.

"Fujitsu's announcement of its new VPP500 represents a novel
approach in supercomputer architectural design.  The product
leverages Fujitsu's impressive semiconductor packaging prowess to
extend its conventional parallel/vector architecture, enabling a
customer to scale up to a supercomputer system with hundreds of
compact high-speed processors.  If Fujitsu's price/performance
claims prove out, the product could represent a significant
competitive challenge to Cray Research's flagship C-90," observes
Industry Analyst Gary Smaby, president of the Smaby Group.


Easily Upgradable

Configured from a minimum of seven to a maximum of 222 PEs,
a VPP500 system can achieve processing speeds ranging from 11.2
gigaflops to 355 gigaflops.  The VPP500 is the only parallel
supercomputer available today to scale in increments of one
processing element.  VPP500 customers can gradually add computing
power as their needs dictate.  In addition, current users of
Fujitsu's vector supercomputers, the VP2000 Series and the VPX200
Series can easily upgrade their general purpose supercomputers
into an ultra-high-speed system.


Software Availability

The Fujitsu VPP500 overcomes what has been described as a
software shortage in the parallel segment of the supercomputer
industry.  To run vector-based software, which includes most of
today's supercomputing software, next generation parallel super-
computers require laborious computer code decomposition and
recomposition, if possible at all.   "This new approach to
supercomputing provides the benefits of conventional vector
processing, which includes access to existing software assets,
with the performance advantages of parallel processing," said Dr.
Kenichi Miura, vice president of Fujitsu America's Computational
Research Division and General Manager for Fujitsu America's
Supercomputer Group.

Industry expert Howard Richmond of the Gartner Group
believes, "by using a small number of very powerful processors,
the parallel programming model is simplified.  It will be easier
to decompose an application across a few hundred processors
rather than several thousand."

Fujitsu is the only parallel supercomputer manufacturer to
offer source code compatibility with programming code written in
standard Fortran 77 without a compromise in the supercomputer
performance.  Fortran 77 is the most commonly used supercomputing
program language for scientists and engineers.  Existing Fujitsu
vector-based software applications can run on the VPP500 after
simple recompilation.  Most significant, software written in
standard Fortran 77 for competitive vector supercomputers will
also run on the Fujitsu VPP500 once recompiled.

"The major benefit to customers is that millions of dollars
of software development assets can be preserved, without
substantial modification, as customers move to massively parallel
processing capabilities and teraflops performance," said
Thomas Miller, vice president of sales and marketing for Fujitsu
America's Supercomputer Group.

The operating system is based on the industry standard UNIX
System V Release 4, which will accommodate a simple integration
into an organization's range of workstations, mainframes and
other supercomputers.

Fujitsu Limited, a $25 billion company, is the world's
second largest computer manufacturer and the largest in Japan.
The company entered the supercomputer market in 1977 with its
FACOM 230-75 APU and today offers the VP and VPX Series, a com-
plete line of vector processor-based supercomputers.  Today,
Fujitsu ranks second worldwide in the number of supercomputer
installations with more than 160 around the globe.

                             # # #

UNIX is a registered trademark of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.