Japan's RIKEN Center for Computational Science has unveiled a virtual version of its Fugaku supercomputer that can be deployed in AWS.

The Fugaku supercomputer was crowned the most powerful computer in the world in 2020. The machine kept the title for a couple of years until overtaken in 2022 by Frontier - the first exascale system.

RIKEN wants to make it easier for anyone to run a Fugaku system, so has decided to make the machine's software stack available in virtual form that can run on cloud services and other on-prem computers.

"Just building this 160,000-node machine is far from sufficient. The value of Fugaku is not only the hardware, but also the software solutions including the applications," said RIKEN director, Satoshi Matsuoka. "We've injected this supercomputing environment directly into the cloud to extend applications and have much larger impact than in a single machine."

The first version of Virtual Fugaku - released this week - was coded to run on Amazon's home-made Graviton processors which, like the Fujitsu A64FX processor that powers Fugaku, are based on the Arm architecture.

Graviton also uses Scalable Vector Extension (SVE) instructions for accelerating number crunching - as does the Fujitsu A64FX.

The Fugaku software stack comprises open source software prepared and adjusted for the supercomputer. RIKEN created a Singularity container image to distribute the code. By deploying this Virtual Fugaku on AWS, users can build their own private Fugaku environment.

RIKEN hasn't detailed what other processors or architectures it will consider for future versions of Virtual Fugaku. We’ve asked for details and will let readers know if we receive useful info.

Whatever platforms it ports to, the RIKEN Center hopes Virtual Fugaku instances will build into a global ecosystem of supercomputers and "continue the legacy" of the original Fugaku system.

"Virtual Fugaku is one of RIKEN's platform strategies aimed at greatly expanding the societal contributions of Fugaku's achievements," professor Satoshi Matsuoka announced in a statement.

"The results achieved using Fugaku - such as infectious disease control, weather forecasting, drug discovery, and new material development - are well known. However, the insights gained from the continuous software maintenance and operations carried out since the development of Fugaku are also significant achievements. We believe it is RIKEN's mission to give back these achievements to society, including those resulting from such efforts," professor Matsuoka added.

The virtual version of Fugaku is also aimed at ensuring that the technologies and research resources developed for the original supercomputer bearing the name are available to builders and designers of next-generation computing infrastructure, he explained.

RIKEN also sees the virtual Fugaku stack as a potential standard platform for operating HPC software. The reasoning goes that if supercomputer centers around the world adopt this stack, users will appreciate a growing library of supercomputer-grade software.

That's a nice proposition - but one that has been tested and mostly failed. HPC workloads are sometimes tightly coupled to hardware designed for specific purposes. Assuming one platform can deliver for everyone who needs HPC resources is likely not a wise decision.

Amazon is of course happy to have been selected as the initial platform for Virtual Fugaku.

"AWS is honored to support RIKEN's efforts to leverage the full potential of cloud computing through Virtual Fugaku and to pioneer new horizons in research and development," declared Ushio Usami, country leader in Japan for the AWS worldwide public sector.

"By expanding the cutting-edge research results cultivated with Fugaku and incorporating the latest cloud services, the forefront of academic research and society will be connected through the cloud," he opined.

Virtual Fugaku can be downloaded here. A README file [PDF] reveals that it currently targets an Amazon Graviton 3E instance running RHEL 8.10 and lists the packages it includes. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/08/07/riken_offers_virtual_fugaku_supercomputer/