Battery

Fujitsu FX1 Chassis(Source: Fujitsu)

Fujitsu FX1 CPU/Memory unit(Source: Fujitsu)

Fujitsu FX1 Populated Rack(Source: Fujitsu)JAXA orders super computer capable of 135 teraflops

Fujitsu is more known to many as a maker of small notebook and tablet computers. However, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has tapped Fujitsu as the source of its new supercomputer.

Thesupercomputer ordered by JAXA will be based on the Fujitsu FX1 technical computing server. JAXA’s system will be powered by 3,392 FX1 computing nodes that combine to deliver a peak theoretical performance of 135 teraflops.

The new Fujitsu supercomputer will be replacing JAXA’s existing supercomputer called the Numerical Simulator III. According to Fujitsu, JAXA extensively uses advanced numerical simulation technology in the development of rockets, aircraft and advanced space transport systems. The supercomputer will literally be used for rocket science.

Fujitsu says that JAXA will move from its current supercomputer to the new one in April 2008 and that the entire system will be up and running by April 2009. JAXA’s current supercomputer has a peak theoretical performance of a comparatively miserly 9.6 teraflops and features 3.6TB of total memory.

The new FX1 based supercomputer will offer an increase in performance of 15x over the existing computer system. The new supercomputer will also boast 11 petabytes of storage and 100TB of memory total.

Each of theFX1 nodes(PDF) has a Fujitsu SPARC64 VII CPU built on 65nm technology running at 2.5GHz. Each processor has four cores and performance of 40 GFLOPS per CPU. The maximum memory capacity per node is 32GB and each node has a maximum power consumption of 2,213 W.

The fastest supercomputer in the world, IBM’s Blue Water, will be installed at the University of Illinois. Blue water is expected to be completed in 2011 and is expected to be capable of one petaflops.

dailytech.com