By Hiroyuki Oyama / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

Japanese research institution Riken and Fujitsu Ltd. announced Wednesday they will jointly develop the successor to the Fugaku supercomputer. The successor's processing power, necessary for AI learning and other applications, will be several hundred times greater than that of Fugaku. Fujitsu will be responsible for the basic design of the entire system and will also develop a new central processing unit $(CPU.AU)$, the brain of the supercomputer.

The successor supercomputer is planned to be built on a site adjacent to Fugaku at Riken's Center for Computational Science in Kobe, with the aim of starting operation by around 2030.

According to sources familiar with the matter, a bidding process to determine the operator was held earlier this month, and Riken signed a contract with Fujitsu on Monday.

Fujitsu was also in charge of developing Fugaku and Fugaku's predecessor, the K computer. The new supercomputer will be the third consecutive supercomputer developed in Japan.

Finer circuit line widths in semiconductors leads to higher performance and lower power consumption. Fujitsu is developing a CPU with the world's most advanced technology, featuring a 2-nanometer circuit line width, and plans to use the technology in developing a CPU for the successor machine.

Riken intends to add a device that can handle large amounts of data processing for AI, including a graphics processing unit (GPU), which Fugaku lacks. Riken is separately conducting a bidding process for a joint development partner.

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This article is from The Yomiuri Shimbun. Neither Dow Jones Newswires, MarketWatch, Barron's nor The Wall Street Journal were involved in the creation of this content.

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June 18, 2025 03:14 ET (07:14 GMT)

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