Singapore researchers will be amongst the first in the world to be granted regular access to Japan’s Fugaku supercomputer, thanks to a new agreement between Japan’s Research Organization for Information Science and Technology (RIST) and National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore.
In the first such arrangement of its kind outside of Japan, Singapore researchers can apply for available resources through an annual Call for Projects to Fugaku, which will be coordinated by NSCC and RIST.
The new Call for Projects to Fugaku will be launched in Singapore next month. Upon approval, the first projects can expect to start using the Fugaku system from April 2022.
Since its debut in June last year, Fugaku has retained its ranking as the reigning top supercomputer in the world in the November 2021 issue of the global TOP500 supercomputer list. With 442 PFLOPS of compute power, Fugaku is about three times more powerful than its closest competitor.
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The additional access to Fugaku will therefore give Singapore researchers more options for resources to meet their high-performance computing (HPC) needs.
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The maximum amount of Fugaku resources available to Singapore researchers annually will be capped at 1M Node Hours (NH), or about 5 research projects, with a maximum duration of one year for each project to use the approved resources.
According to Associate Professor Tan Tin Wee, chief executive of NSCC, the trial access to Fugaku last year garnered keen interest from Singapore research teams. Eight research teams applied for resources via the Fugaku Preliminary Use Projects last year, out of which six projects were approved for resources.
The approved Singapore projects covered Covid-related biomedical research, cancer research and materials science research.
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“NSCC’s new partnership with RIST will ensure that Singapore researchers have a regular path to access Fugaku’s ARM chip-based architecture and compute power. Tapping on such resources helps broaden the experience of the Singapore high-performance computing (HPC) community by getting access to CPU and interconnect technologies that are not available in Singapore,” says Tan.
Dr Hideyuki Takatsu, managing director of RIST, adds: “Our [new] agreement with NSCC is a new step to expanding international Fugaku utilisation. I believe that this will promote international cooperative research and worldwide dissemination of Japanese application software and Fugaku’s ARM chip-based architecture.”
The new annual Call for Projects to Fugaku agreement builds on an earlier Memorandum of Understanding on Information Exchange Concerning Promotion of Supercomputer Utilization between RIST and NSCC.
RIST is the general incorporated foundation that is responsible for the promotion of the shared use of Japan’s collective supercomputing resources across the entire country, including those of the supercomputer Fugaku.
Photo: Bloomberg
