IP: ATIP96.020 : Fujitsu's New Hi Perf Computers, VPP700 and

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

ABSTRACT: This week, Fujitsu has announced their next product in the VPP
line, the VPP700 (parallel vector processing), as well as the successor to
their AP1000, the AP3000 (parallel scalar processing). Both products provide
performance improvements over their predecessors. While the announcements
have been expected, nevertheless, we feel that there are some changes in the
company's strategy in the high performance computing field.




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Copyright (c) 1996 by the Asian Technology Information Program (ATIP) 
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    Fujitsu's New High Performance Computers, VPP700 and AP3000
                    (D. Kahaner, ATIP Tokyo)


This week, Fujitsu has announced their next product in the VPP line, the
VPP700 (parallel vector processing), as well as the successor to their
AP1000, the AP3000 (parallel scalar processing). Both products provide
performance improvements over their predecessors. While the announcements
have been expected, nevertheless, we feel that there are some changes in the
company's strategy in the high performance computing field.


Fujitsu has two thrusts in High Performance Computing (HPC). The company's
traditional shared memory supercomputers based on customized vector
processors were represented by their VP, and subsequently their VX series.
They used a custom vector processor designed and built by Fujitsu. This
basic processor was redesigned into a system with distributed memory and a
high speed crossbar switch in their VPP series. The first of these was the
VPP500 (using Galium Arsenide). A tuned and slightly modified version of the
VPP500 was installed as the Numerical Wind Tunnel (NWT) in Japan's National
Aerospace Laboratory, originally with 140 processors and shortly to be
upgraded to about 165 processors. This machine promised high peak
performance, but it is large and uses a great deal of electricity. Recently,
Fujitsu moved from GA to CMOS based technology for its vector processors
when they introduced the VPP300. The company feels that the VPP300 is a
successful product, and claims to have sold 58 systems totaling  265
processors, with aggregate peak performance of over 500GFlops. The VPP300 is
available in configurations of 1-16 processors, while the new VPP700 is
scaled up to allow 8-256CPUs. The largest VPP700 configuration is claimed to
have peak performance of 563GFlops. VPP series machines all utilize
2.2GF/CPU air cooled CMOS vector processors, and, in multiprocessor
configurations have 570MB/sec x2CPU processor to processor crossbar network.
A TFlop (Teraflop) machine is possible.


Generally, scientific users, especially those with vector processing
applications, prefer systems with fewer, high performance processors, as
opposed to larger numbers of less powerful processors. In particular, many
users will execute their programs on a single processor, and thus want that
to be as fast as possible.


Fujitsu has also been developing a (non vector) parallel computer (MPP). The
earliest version was called CAP (Cellular Array Processor), but several
years ago the name was changed to AP. The latest version AP3000, uses Sun's
UltraSPARC 64bit CPUs in a two dimensional torus architecture, and is
available with 4-1024 CPUs. Each node runs Solaris 2.5, and Fujitsu claims
to have been careful to leave the Solaris alone, and feels confident that
all pure Solaris applications will run without problems. Applications cited
by Fujitsu for the AP3000 include CAE, structural analysis, computational
chemistry, visualization, mathematical libraries, decision support systems,
WWW servers, etc.


Fujitsu expects to begin shipping the VPP700 and the AP3000 at the end of
1996. Other information and basic specifications for these machines are
being widely distributed by Fujitsu, so these will not be repeated here.




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