Fujitsu, working with RIKEN, has completed the design of Post-K, the successor to the K supercomputer.

Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) is aiming to start the public service of Post-K around 2021 or 2022. Fujitsu has now concluded an official contract with RIKEN to manufacture, ship, and install hardware for Post-K. In addition, Fujitsu will productize a commercial supercomputer using technology created in the Post-K development process, and plans to begin global sales in the second half of fiscal 2019. The company's efforts in the development of Post-K will be exhibited at Fujitsu Forum 2019, to be held on May 17 at the Tokyo International Forum in Japan.

Since 2006, Fujitsu and RIKEN have jointly developed the K computer, aiming to start public service in 2012. Post-K is the successor to the K computer, and it is expected to serve as both a research and development platform for solving a variety of social and scientific issues.

The production of hardware for Post-K will be conducted by Fujitsu IT Products Limited, Fujitsu's key computer system plant, and the hardware will be installed in the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS), where the K computer is currently located.

Post-K will be equipped with A64FX, a high-performance CPU developed by Fujitsu, and the new system will support a wide range of software due to its use of the Arm instruction set architecture, while offering features such as high parallelization, extremely low power consumption, and mainframe-class levels of reliability. Moreover, as part of the development and production of this hardware in addition to the development of software, Fujitsu will work with open source communities. For example, the company will promote the Arm ecosystem, utilize open source software with Post-K, and apply the results obtained with the supercomputer.

Fujitsu will promote the development and deployment of the system in preparation for Post-K to start public service. Moreover, utilizing the technologies created through the development of Post-K, Fujitsu will productize the commercial supercomputer, and plans to begin global sales as the successor to the Fujitsu Supercomputer PRIMEHPC FX100 in the second half of fiscal 2019. Fujitsu is also considering measures such as developing an entry-level model that will be easy to deploy, or supplying these technologies to other vendors.