Fujitsu has disclosed a plan to develop a supercomputer with 3 petaflops of computing power by early 2011.

IBM's Blue Gene/L with 136.8 teraflops was ranked as the fastest supercomputer in the latest Supercomputer top 500 ranking. Thus, Fujitsu's proposed supercomputer is slated to be more than ten times faster than what is currently available.

To realize such performance, Fujitsu intends to throw a new light on elemental technologies, as company researchers think that a petaflops computer would not be achievable merely by enhancing present supercomputer technologies.

Fujitsu launched the peta-scale computing promotion group at its research subsidiary Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. last October. The group had started researching core technologies such as processor and low power consumption technology.

The Japanese company will collaborate with Kyushu University about opto-switching technology for petaflops computers. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology is advocating the necessity of petaflops-level supercomputers around 2010 and called for R&D themes for the supercomputer.

The ministry selected Kyushu University's interconnect technology for peta-scale computers as a part of its R&D project for future supercomputer technologies. NEC Corp. and Hitachi Ltd were also selected as a part of the R&D project.

Fujitsu has not yet decided whether it will use an existing processor or will develop a new processor from the scratch for the petaflops computer.

Chiaki Ito, corporate executive vice president who is in charge of Fujitsu's platform business, said that the group will collaborate with Fujitsu's semiconductor group to decide on the design of the supercomputer.