Fugaku (supercomputer)


Fugaku — named after an alternative name for Mount Fuji — is a petascale supercomputer at the RIKEN Center for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan. It started development in 2014 as the successor to the K computer, and it is scheduled to start operating in 2021, although parts of the computer were put into operation in June 2020. It is the fastest supercomputer in the world in the TOP500 list.

Hardware

The supercomputer is built with the Fujitsu A64FX microprocessor. This CPU is based on the ARM version 8.2A processor architecture, and adopts the Scalable Vector Extensions for supercomputers. Fugaku was aimed to be about 100 times more powerful than the K computer and have a high level of practicability in the world. Fugaku uses 158,976 A64FX CPUs joined together using Fujitsu's proprietary torus fusion interconnect.
The final reported performance of Fugaku is a Rpeak of 0.54 exaFLOPS in the FP64 used by the TOP500.

Software

Fugaku will use a "light-weight multi-kernel operating system" named IHK/McKernel. The operating system uses both Linux and the McKernel light-weight kernel operating simultaneously and side-by-side. The infrastructure that both kernels run on is termed the Interface for Heterogeneous Kernels. The high-performance simulations are run on McKernel, with Linux available for all other POSIX-compatible services.

History

On May 23, 2019, RIKEN announced that the supercomputer was to be named Fugaku. In August 2019, the logo for Fugaku was unveiled; it depicts Mount Fuji, symbolising "Fugaku's high performance" and "the wide range of its users". In November 2019, the prototype of Fugaku won first place in the Green500 list. Shipment of the equipment racks to the RIKEN facility began on December 2, 2019, and was completed on May 13, 2020. In June 2020, Fugaku became the fastest supercomputer in the world in the TOP500 list, displacing the IBM Summit.

Cost

In 2018 Nikkei reported the programme would cost . The cost of the programme has caused significant controversy: in June 2020 the New York Times reported criticism of the expense, and that similar near-future exascale supercomputers would cost less and overtake Fugaku's performance.

Comparison

NameStart YearEnd YearPerformance
（PFLOPS)		Cost
（Million USD）		TOP500 RankingCPU/GPU VendorCPUOS
Fugaku2020-4151213June 2020 1stFujitsuA64FXCustom Linux-based kernel
Summit2018-148300June 2018 to November 2019 1stIBM, NVIDIAPOWER9, TeslaLinux
Sierra2018-94300November 2018 to November 2019 2ndIBM, NVIDIAPOWER9, TeslaLinux
Sunway TaihuLight2016-93280June 2016 to November 2017 1stNRCPC:en:Sunway SW26010|Sunway SW26010Linux
K20112019101045June 2011 - November 2011 1stFujitsuSPARC64 VIIIfxLinux