Fujitsu today announced the development of a supercomputer system for Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau (hereinafter CWB)(1) for use in numerical weather predictions. The new system started operation in June 2022 under an initiative that was initially implemented in 2021. The program will be extended in stages over a period of three years, and the final system, which will be completed in December 2023, is expected to achieve theoretical peak performance of 10 PFLOPS(2), making it the fastest supercomputer in Taiwan.
With its tropical and subtropical climate, Taiwan sits in one of the regions of the world most vulnerable to natural disasters including typhoons and heavy rain.
The new system will help mitigate the threats posed to Taiwan by such disasters, enabling the CWB to promote advanced weather observation, improve observation and forecast accuracy of weather disasters, and strengthen its efforts to observe and analyze the long-term impacts of climate change in addition to daily weather forecasting services. It will further support the CWB in diversifying weather services as a key element in its infrastructure to promote of smart and advanced weather services, one of the targets of the CWB’s mid-term plan.
The system is primarily based on Fujitsu’s supercomputer “FUJITSU Supercomputer PRIMEHPC FX1000” hardware, which features the same A64FX CPU as the supercomputer Fugaku, jointly developed by RIKEN and Fujitsu.
Fujitsu will continue to support the CWB’s weather forecast services by providing its high reliable technical expertise in high performance computing (HPC) and know-how in weather services in general.
(1) Central Weather Bureau :
Location: Taipei City; Director-General: Cheng, Ming-Dean
(2) PFLOPS :
Peta Floating-point Operations Per Second; A thousand trillion (1015) FLOPS, meaning a thousand trillion floating-point calculations per second
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当社は、このたび台湾交通部中央気象局様の第六世代数値気象予報スーパーコンピュータシステムを構築しました。
本システムは2022年6月より稼働開始し、2021年から3年間にわたり段階的に納入され、2023年12月に完成する最終的なシステムの総理論演算性能は10ペタフロップス（注1）となり、総理論演算性能において台湾でもっとも高速なスーパーコンピュータとなる予定です。
熱帯、亜熱帯気候区にある台湾は、台風や豪雨など最も気象災害のリスクを受けやすい地域の一つであり、本システムの稼働により日々の気象予報業務に加え、高度気象観測の推進、気象災害の観測と予報能力の精度向上、長期気候変化の観測と分析などの強化が期待され、気象災害から台湾住民の安全を守るとともに経済損失を防ぐことに寄与します。
また、台湾中央気象局様が掲げている中期計画であるスマート・高度気象業務の推進を支えるシステム基盤として、多様化する気象業務に貢献します。
本システムは、国立研究開発法人理化学研究所（所在地：埼玉県和光市、理事長：五神真）様と当社が開発したスーパーコンピュータ「富岳」にも使用されているプロセッサー「FUJITSU Processor A64FX」を搭載した当社製スーパーコンピュータ 「FUJITSU Supercomputer PRIMEHPC FX1000」を中核に構成したものです。
当社は、HPC（ハイパフォーマンス・コンピューティング：高性能計算技術）の技術的知見や気象業務全般に対するノウハウ、および気象業務運用を支える高い信頼性により台湾中央気象局様の気象予報業務を支えます。
