Fujitsu today announced the launch of its new service portfolio “Fujitsu Computing as a Service (CaaS)” to accelerate digital transformation (DX) and empower customers globally by offering access to some of the world’s most advanced computing technologies via the cloud for commercial use. The new service encompasses 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 allow a wide range of users to solve problems with AI and machine learning. Fujitsu will begin delivery of these new services to the Japanese market starting in October 2022 with a global rollout to international regions including Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Americas to follow.
As the first step, Fujitsu will begin preorders for “Fujitsu Cloud Service HPC,” which offers the computing power of the “Fujitsu Supercomputer PRIMEHPC FX1000,” which shares the same CPU at the heart of the supercomputer Fugaku. Fujitsu will begin sales of the service for the general public and organizations in Japan starting April 6, 2022, with delivery to commence from October. In the months ahead, Fujitsu will further add services for its Digital Annealer technology and AI cloud services to its service lineup in order to provide further value-added services that seamlessly integrate various solutions.
Vivek Mahajan, Chief Technology Officer (Corporate Executive Officer, SEVP) Fujitsu Limited, comments: “CaaS will provide customers with seamless access to services on the public cloud to meet rapidly increasing computing demands, leveraging Fujitsu’s world-leading advanced computing technologies. In the future, we look to further expand the portfolio with access to technologies like quantum computing. This move marks an important milestone toward democratizing high-performance and quantum computing and will play an important role in the achievement of Fujitsu’s Purpose: ‘to make the world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation.'”
To realize the vision of a more sustainable world embodied by its global business brand “FUJITSU Uvance,” Fujitsu will draw on CaaS to promote the commercial use of a range of advanced computing technologies, which have until the present been largely limited to applications in an academic context due in part to prohibitively high investment costs and implementation and operational loads.
Fujitsu anticipates that CaaS will contribute to solving societal issues, as well as persistent challenges in a wide range of industries, including finance, manufacturing, distribution, logistics, disaster prevention (including earthquake and tsunami prediction), 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 aiming to apply advanced computing technologies like Fujitsu’s Digital Annealer and high performance computing (HPC) in their business. To address this issue, Fujitsu will offer users easy access to a range of services under its new CaaS portfolio, allowing users from a wide range of industries to easily tap into the power offered by Fujitsu’s advanced computing technologies.
Outline of CaaS
The cloud services portfolio of CaaS represents one of the main pillars of Fujitsu’s “Uvance” brand to create a sustainable world and resolve societal issues through digital innovation.
The service portfolio will offer comprehensive support for customers, featuring software, a service integration platform, as well as consulting and tuning services that operate on top of the cloud. This allows users to enjoy the problem-solving capabilities and access to world-class computing resources without the deployment and operational costs typically associated with technologies like supercomputers.
Features of “Fujitsu Cloud Service HPC”
“Fujitsu Cloud Service HPC” provides users access to PRIMEHPC FX1000, Fujitsu’s supercomputer model that utilizes technologies cultivated through 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 support customers in deploying HPC. On the operational side, Fujitsu also offers services for performance tuning and app analysis to support customers focusing on research and analysis.
- On-demand HPC services for access to high-performance computing at any time
- Compute nodes, login nodes, job scheduler, storage, and application software for HPC are set up in advance (users do not have to build their own HPC environment and only need to prepare data needed for their analysis)
- Users pay only for what they need
- 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 knowhow gained through the development of the supercomputer Fugaku (support customers without pre-knowledge to derive maximum benefit from HPC through support in software and library installation and tuning services)
- Development of HPC utilization plans tailored to customers’ business plans
- High compatibility with supercomputer Fugaku to accelerate R&D and deployment of cutting-edge technologies in society
- Simple transfer of research results generated on supercomputer Fugaku to CaaS services to accelerate practical application in society (CPU, job scheduler, file system, compiler, application software, and API common to Fugaku are available)
- Users planning large-scale analysis and research projects are able to migrate to Fugaku in the future with the same operability
Future Plans
Building on its new service portfolio “CaaS,” Fujitsu plans to conduct trials with organizations and companies to optimize designs for the manufacturing industry and optimize drug discovery for pharmaceutical companies.
Fujitsu further aims to contribute to resolving various social issues by supporting customers in managing, digitizing, and integrating ever-increasing amounts of complex data in their business through secure 5G and beyond 5G networks and to provide advanced AI, Digital Annealer and quantum computing technologies for real time processing of digital data.
Comment from Satoshi Matsuoka, Director, Center for Computational Science, RIKEN
“Fugaku was developed as a supercomputer featuring the latest high-performance computing technology and is being used in research and development with the aim of realizing DX and Society 5.0 to contribute to the fulfillment of various SDGs. Within the past two years, 149 companies have already utilized Fugaku in 48 use cases primarily in manufacturing, including trial operations prior to full-scale implementation. The demand for technological capabilities offered by Fugaku continues to grow, coinciding with successful use cases in the shift toward the cloud. We are working with Fujitsu to make its CaaS to be highly compatible with Fugaku to support such requirements, and we expect CaaS to become an important service for quickly connecting R & D on Fugaku to industrial use and practical implementation in society. Moving forward, we will collaborate with Fujitsu to further synergize Fugaku with this new service to provide its capabilities seamlessly in the cloud.”
