TOKYO, Nov 18, 2021 - (JCN Newswire via SEAPRWire.com) - Fujitsu and RIKEN today announced that the supercomputer Fugaku took the first place for the CosmoFlow training application benchmark (1), one of the key MLPerf HPC benchmarks for large-scale machine learning processing tasks requiring capabilities of a supercomputer. Fujitsu and RIKEN leveraged approximately half of Fugaku's resources (2) to achieve this result, demonstrating the world's fastest performance in this key benchmark.MLPerf HPC measures how many deep learning models can be trained per time unit (throughput performance, 3). Software technology that further refines Fugaku's parallel processing performance has achieved a processing speed approximately 1.77 times faster than that of other systems, demonstrating the world's highest level of performance in the field of large-scale scientific and technological calculations using machine learning.These results were announced as MLPerf HPC version 1.0 on November 17th (November 18th Japan time) at the SC21 High-Performance Computing Conference, which is currently being held as a hybrid event.Fugaku Claims World's Highest Level of Performance in the Field of Large-scale Scientific and Technological Calculations Using Machine LearningMLPerf HPC is a performance competition composed of three separate benchmark programs: CosmoFlow, which predicts cosmological parameters, one of the indicators used in the study of the evolution and structure of the universe, DeepCAM (4), which identifies abnormal weather phenomena, and Open Catalyst (5), which estimates how molecules react on the catalyst surface.For CosmoFlow, Fujitsu and RIKEN used approximately half of the Fugaku system's entire computing resources to train multiple deep learning models to a certain degree of prediction accuracy and measured from the start time of the model that started the training to the end time of the model that completed the training last to evaluate throughput performance. To further enhance the parallel processing performance of Fugaku, Fujitsu and RIKEN applied technology to programs used on the system that reduce the mutual interference of communication between CPUs, which occurs when multiple learning models are processed in parallel, and also optimize the amount of data communication between CPU and storage. As a result, the system trained 637 deep learning models in 8 hours and 16 minutes, a rate of about 1.29 deep learning models per minute.The measured value of Fugaku claimed first place amongst all the systems for the CosmoFlow training application benchmark category, demonstrating performance at rates approximately 1.77 times faster than other systems. This result revealed that Fugaku has the world's highest level of performance in the field of large-scale scientific and technological calculations using machine learning.Going forward, Fujitsu and RIKEN will make software stacks such as libraries and AI frameworks available to the public that accelerate large-scale machine learning processing developed for this measurement. Widely sharing the knowledge of large-scale machine learning processing using supercomputers gained through this exercise will allow users to leverage world-leading systems for the analysis of simulation results, leading to potential new discoveries in astrophysics and other scientific and technological fields. These resources will also be applied to other large-scale machine learning calculations, such as natural language processing models used in machine translation services, to accelerate technological innovation and contribute to solving societal and scientific problems.About MLPerf HPCMLPerf HPC is a machine learning benchmark created in 2020 by MLCommons, a community that conducts machine learning benchmarks, to evaluate the system performance of a supercomputer for large-scale machine learning calculations, which take an enormous amount of time, to create a performance list of systems that execute machine learning applications. It is used for supercomputers around the world and is anticipated to become a new industry standard.MLPerf HPC was designed to assess the performance of large-scale machine learning models requiring the use of supercomputers. Performance evaluation was carried out for 3 applications: CosmoFlow, DeepCAM, and Open Catalyst. In addition, a benchmark that measures the number of deep learning models trained per time unit has also been newly established.All measurement data are available on the following website: Related links: https://mlcommons.org/(1) CosmoFLow:A deep learning model for predicting cosmological parameters from three-dimensional simulation results of dark matter distributed in outer space.(2) Approximately half of the whole Fugaku system:Since this measurement was conducted during the operation of Fugaku, the measurement scale was halved in consideration of the impact on other researches using Fugaku.(3) Measure how many deep learning models can be learned per unit time (throughput performance):A new measurement method for MLPerf. By learning multiple models simultaneously, the total performance of a supercomputer can be extracted, and by measuring the number of models that can be learned per unit time, it is possible to compare the performance of the entire system of a supercomputer.(4) DeepCAM:A Deep Learning Model for Identifying Abnormal Meteorological Phenomena from Global Climate Prediction Simulation Data.(5) Open Catalyst:A deep learning model that estimates the relaxation energy of molecules on the catalyst surface from simulation data of atomic and intermolecular reactions.About FujitsuFujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company offering a full range of technology products, solutions and services. Approximately 126,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 3.6 trillion yen (US$34 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021. For more information, please see www.fujitsu.com.About RIKEN Center for Computational ScienceRIKEN is Japan's largest comprehensive research institution renowned for high-quality research in a diverse range of scientific disciplines. Founded in 1917 as a private research foundation in Tokyo, RIKEN has grown rapidly in size and scope, today encompassing a network of world-class research centers and institutes across Japan including the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS), the home of the supercomputer Fugaku. As the leadership center of high-performance computing, the R-CCS explores the "Science of computing, by computing, and for computing." The outcomes of the exploration - the technologies such as open source software - are its core competence. The R-CCS strives to enhance the core competence and to promote the technologies throughout the world. Copyright 2021 JCN Newswire. All rights reserved. (via SEAPRWire)
TOKYO, Nov 19, 2020 - (JCN Newswire) - Fujitsu, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), and RIKEN today announced a performance milestone in supercomputing, achieving the highest performance and claiming the ranking positions on the MLPerf HPC benchmark(1). The MLPerf HPC benchmark measures large-scale machine learning processing on a level requiring supercomputers and the parties achieved these outcomes leveraging approximately half of the "AI-Bridging Cloud Infrastructure" ("ABCI") supercomputer system, operated by AIST, and about 1/10 of the resources of the supercomputer Fugaku, which is currently under joint development by RIKEN and Fujitsu. Utilizing about half the computing resources of its system, ABCI achieved processing speeds 20 times faster than other GPU-type systems. That is the highest performance among supercomputers based on GPUs, computing devices specialized in deep learning. Similarly, about 1/10 of Fugaku was utilized to set a record for CPU-type supercomputers consisting of general-purpose computing devices only, achieving a processing speed 14 times faster than that of other CPU-type systems. The results were presented as MLPerf HPC v0.7 on November 18th (November 19th Japan Time) at the 2020 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC20) event, which is currently being held online.BackgroundMLPerf HPC is a performance competition in two benchmark programs: "CosmoFlow"(2), which predicts cosmological parameters, and "DeepCAM"(3), which identifies abnormal weather phenomena. The ABCI ranked first in metrics of all registered systems in the "CosmoFlow" benchmark program, with about half of the whole ABCI system(4), and Fugaku ranked second with measurement of about 1/10 of the whole system(5). The ABCI system delivered 20 times the performance of the other GPU types, while Fugaku delivered 14 times the performance of the other CPU types. ABCI achieved first place amongst all registered systems in the "DeepCAM" benchmark program as well, also with about half of the system. In this way, ABCI and Fugaku overwhelmingly dominated the top positions, demonstrating the superior technological capabilities of Japanese supercomputers in the field of machine learning. Fujitsu, AIST, RIKEN and Fujitsu Laboratories Limited will release the software stacks including the library and the AI framework which accelerate the large-scale machine learning process developed for this measurement to the public. This move will make it easier to use large-scale machine learning with supercomputers, while its use in analyzing simulation results is anticipated to contribute to the detection of abnormal weather phenomena and to new discoveries in astrophysics. As a core platform for building Society 5.0, it will also contribute to solve social and scientific issues, as it is expected to expand to applications such as the creation of general-purpose language models that require enormous computational performance.About MLPerf HPCMLPerf is a machine learning benchmark community established in May 2018 for the purpose of creating a performance list of systems running machine learning applications. MLPerf developed MLPerf HPC as a new machine learning benchmark to evaluate the performance of machine learning calculations using supercomputers. It is used for supercomputers around the world and is expected to become a new industry standard. MLPerf HPC v0.7 evaluated performance on two real applications, "CosmoFlow" and "DeepCAM," to measure large-scale machine learning performance requiring the use of a supercomputer. All measurement data are available on the following website: Related links: https://mlperf.org/Comments from the PartnersFujitsu, Executive Director, Naoki Shinjo "The successful construction and optimization of the software stack for large-scale deep learning processing, executed in close collaboration with AIST, RIKEN, and many other stakeholders made this achievement a reality, helping us to successfully claim the top position in the MLPerf HPC benchmark in an important milestone for the HPC community. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all concerned for their great cooperation and support. We are confident that these results will pave the way for the use of supercomputers for increasingly large-scale machine learning processing tasks and contribute to many research and development projects in the future, and we are proud that Japan's research and development capabilities will help lead global efforts in this field."Hirotaka Ogawa, Principal Research Manager, Artificial Intelligence Research Center, AIST "ABCI" was launched on August 1, 2018 as an open, advanced, and high-performance computing infrastructure for the development of artificial intelligence technologies in Japan. Since then, it has been used in industry-academia-government collaboration and by a diverse range of businesses, to accelerate R&D and verification of AI technologies that utilize high computing power, and to advance social utilization of AI technologies. The overwhelming results of MLPerf HPC, the benchmark for large-scale machine learning processing, showed the world the high level of technological capabilities of Japan's industry-academia-government collaboration. AIST's Artificial Intelligence Research Center is promoting the construction of large-scale machine learning models with high versatility and the development of its application technologies, with the aim of realizing "easily-constructable AI". We expect that the results of this time will be utilized in such technological development. Satoshi Matsuoka, Director General, RIKEN Center for Computational Science "In this memorable first MLPerf HPC, Fugaku, Japan's top CPU supercomputer, along with AIST's ABCI, Japan's top GPU supercomputer, exhibited extraordinary performance and results, serving as a testament to Japan's ability to compete at an exceptional level on the global stage in the area of AI research and development. I only regret that we couldn't achieve the overwhelming performance as we did for HPL-AI to be compliant with inaugural regulations for MLPerf HPC benchmark. In the future, as we continue to further improve the performance on Fugaku, we will make ongoing efforts to take advantage of Fugaku's super large-scale environment in the area of high-performance deep learning in cooperation with various stakeholders."(1) MLPerf HPC MLPerf HPC evaluates the processing performance of the system as a whole, including the software required for machine learning processing, based on real applications that utilize machine learning. HPL-AI evaluates the basic performance of the hardware used in machine learning processing, such as single-precision and half-precision arithmetic units.(2) CosmoFLow Deep learning models were trained to predict cosmological parameters from the results of three-dimensional simulations of dark matter distributed in space.(3) DeepCAM A deep learning model was trained that identifies abnormal weather phenomena with global climate prediction simulation data.(4) half of the whole ABCI system In accordance with the rules of this time's MLPerf HPC v0.7, the measurement was executing using not the whole system, but just half of ABCI's resources.(5) 1/10 of the whole Fugaku system In accordance with the rules of this time's MLPerf HPC v0.7, the measurement was executing using not the whole system, but just 1/10 of Fugaku's resources.About FujitsuFujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company offering a full range of technology products, solutions and services. Approximately 130,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 3.9 trillion yen (US$35 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2020. For more information, please see www.fujitsu.com.About National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science & Technology (AIST)AIST is the largest public research institute established in 1882 in Japan. The research fields of AIST covers all industrial sciences, e.g., electronics, material science, life science, metrology, etc. Our missions are bridging the gap between basic science and industrialization and solving social problems facing the world. we prepare several open innovation platforms to contribute to these missions, where researchers in companies, university professors, graduated students, as well as AIST researchers, get together to achieve our missions. The open innovation platform established recently is The Global Zero Emission Research Center which contributes to achieving a zero-emission society collaborating with foreign researches. https://www.aist.go.jp/index_en.htmlAbout RIKEN Center for Computational ScienceRIKEN is Japan's largest comprehensive research institution renowned for high-quality research in a diverse range of scientific disciplines. Founded in 1917 as a private research foundation in Tokyo, RIKEN has grown rapidly in size and scope, today encompassing a network of world-class research centers and institutes across Japan including the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS), the home of the supercomputer Fugaku. As the leadership center of high-performance computing, the R-CCS explores the "Science of computing, by computing, and for computing." The outcomes of the exploration - the technologies such as open source software - are its core competence. The R-CCS strives to enhance the core competence and to promote the technologies throughout the world. Copyright 2020 JCN Newswire. All rights reserved. www.jcnnewswire.com
KAWASAKI, Japan, Nov 9, 2020 - (JCN Newswire) - Fujitsu Laboratories Limited, in collaboration with the University of Toronto, has successfully developed a new parallel search technology to help achieve megabit-class performance for large-scale problems, representing an important technical milestone for its Digital Annealer. Fujitsu's Digital Annealer is a unique computing architecture that rapidly solves combinatorial optimization problems too large and complex for conventional technologies. Figure 1 Real world problems and scale in bitsFigure 2 Outline of the new technologyFigure 3 Outline of the production schedule problem and the results obtainedThe current, second-generation Digital Annealer Cloud Service, available to customers since May 2018, delivers performance at 8,192 bits to offer users a powerful tool for solving optimization problems in fields including logistics, finance, medicine, and manufacturing. As applications in a variety of industries continue to grow, however, a need continues to exist for a technology that can handle problems at an even larger scale in order to solve a broader range of complex, real-world problems. With this challenge in mind, Fujitsu Laboratories has successfully demonstrated the world's first practical solution on the scale of one megabit for an Ising machine(1) with its Digital Annealer, applying a new parallel search technology. Fujitsu Laboratories aims to contribute to solving real-world problems by integrating this technology into its Digital Annealer, furthering expanding its ability to solve large-scale combinatorial optimization problems in a variety of fields.Development Background and ChallengesWith the acceleration of DX initiatives in the corporate world, users in many industries and disciplines increasingly face situations in which they need to quickly find the optimal solution among various combinations of factors in the real-world, including in manufacturing, logistics, disaster prevention, and new drug development. In order to resolve these practical challenges, it has become necessary to solve combinatorial optimization problems on the scale of one megabit. This remains difficult owing to the fact that obtaining an effective solution in a limited time causes an exponential increase in computational complexity. For instance, in the manufacturing field, large-scale optimization is needed to streamline production, including for scheduling complex manufacturing processes that differ from part to part across an entire plant, taking into account resources such as personnel and equipment, and delivery dates. In the logistics field, it is necessary to not only optimize distribution plans on a regional scale, but also to draw up large-scale plans covering the entire country.Newly Developed TechnologyFujitsu Laboratories has extended its Digital Annealer architecture to develop a new parallel search technology that achieves high performance in solving large-scale problems. Fujitsu Laboratories has demonstrated the solution of a one megabit scale problem with the Digital Annealer leveraging this technology. The features of the newly developed technology are as follows.1. Adaptive parallel search technology for large-scale problemsDigital Annealer achieves high search performance by constructing a basic optimization module with a high degree of parallelism that repeatedly performs an update bit search to transition from a certain state to a more optimal state. In order to solve large-scale problems, Fujitsu Laboratories has developed an adaptive parallel search technology that performs multi-bit update in the early stage when a rapid energy drop is expected due to multi-bit update, and switches to single-bit update to increase the solution search accuracy in the converging stage.2. Cooperative Search Technology in Multiple Server ParallelTo solve large-scale problems that cannot be handled by a single server, Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a technology to solve large-scale problems with multiple linked servers while ensuring consistency in overall solutions. By dividing a large problem into multiple subproblems and assigning them to multiple servers, the solution of the subproblem is shared among the servers, and the local search at each server is appropriately controlled while grasping the state of the overall solution. A large-scale solution system using this technology has made it possible to solve one megabit class large-scale problems.OutcomesFujitsu Laboratories applied the new technology to solve the problem of determining the production schedule for a small batch of a wide variety of servers. To solve this problem, it's necessary to consider complex constraints including work order, worker skill level, break times, and equipment availability. The number of bits in the problem is determined by the number of discrete tasks, the number of workers, the number of pieces of equipment, and the number of time slots, and is very large. In this example, the test was conducted under the conditions of 100 tasks, 12 pieces of equipment, 13 workers, and 65 time slots, and the total number of bits was 1,014,000 bits. By applying the new technique to produce the solution, Fujitsu Laboratories successfully confirmed the solution of a practical problem at the one megabit level (Figure 3).Future PlansFujitsu Laboratories will apply the newly developed technology for the Digital Annealer to help solve various large-scale combinatorial optimization problems in the real world, contributing to the streamlining of the development of new drugs, nationwide transportation and delivery plans, strategies for resolving traffic congestion in urban areas, and work shift planning suitable for the new normal era.(1) Ising Machine an ising machine is a machine that solves combinatorial optimization problems represented by an ising model.About Fujitsu LaboratoriesFounded in 1968 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited, Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. is one of the premier research centers in the world. With a global network of laboratories in Japan, China, the United States and Europe, the organization conducts a wide range of basic and applied research in the areas of Next-generation Services, Computer Servers, Networks, Electronic Devices and Advanced Materials. For more information, please see: http://www.fujitsu.com/jp/group/labs/en/. About Fujitsu LtdFujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company offering a full range of technology products, solutions and services. Approximately 130,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 3.9 trillion yen (US$35 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2020. For more information, please see www.fujitsu.com. Copyright 2020 JCN Newswire. All rights reserved. www.jcnnewswire.com



