The Tokyo Institute of Technology announced plans to launch Japan’s “fastest AI supercomputer” this summer. The supercomputer, called Tsubame3.0, will use Nvidia’s GPU accelerators to double its performance over the Tsubame2.5 predecessor.
Tsubame3.0
The new Tsubame3.0 will use Nvidia’s latest Pascal-based Tesla P100 GPUs, which the company said are 3x as efficient as their predecessors. The new GPUs will deliver up to 12.2 petaflops of double precision performance, which would rank the Tsubame3.0 in the top 10 of the world’s fastest supercomputers.
The supercomputer will be able to deliver up to 47 petaflops of what Nvidia calls “AI computation.” What it really means is half precision computation, which is one of the precision sweet points for AI computation (Nvidia has made 8-bit precision GPUs as well, targeted mainly at systems that need only inference computation).
Nvidia also said that when working together with the Tsubame2.5, the two supercomputers can deliver up to 64.3 petaflops, making the combined system Japan’s highest performing AI supercomputer.
The Tsubame3.0 is expected to be used for education and technology research at Tokyo Tech. However, it will also be accessible to researchers from the private sector and other universities.
