TOKYO, JAPAN — This September, Preferred Networks, Inc. (PFN), a provider of IoT-centric deep learning systems, NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com), the ICT solutions and international communications business within the NTT Group, and NTT Com subsidiary NTT PC Communications Incorporated (NTTPC) announced today the launch of a private supercomputer designed to facilitate research and development of deep learning, including autonomous driving and cancer diagnosis.

The new supercomputer is one of the most powerful to be developed by the private sector in Japan and is equipped with NTT Com and NTTPC's Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) platform, and contains 1,024 of NVIDIA®'s Tesla® multi-node P100 GPUs. Theoretically, the processing speed of the new supercomputer can reach 4.7 PetaFLOPS—a massive 4,700 trillion floating point operations per second—the fastest levels of any computing environment in Japan.

Overview of the private supercomputer

PFN's deep learning research demands an ultra high-speed, high capacity, state-of-the-art computing environment. Existing GPU platforms require massive electricity supplies, generate excessive heat and offer inadequate network speed. To address these issues, PFN adopted the NTT Com Group's proven GPU platform, which boasts significantly advanced technology. They additionally leveraged the latest data center design, building a large-scale multi-node platform using ChainerMN, PFN's technology that significantly accelerates the speed of deep learning by parallelizing calculations over multiple nodes.

NTT Com group has developed and released a multi-node GPU platform on Enterprise Cloud, Nexcenter™, a world-leading data center service, which incorporates the group's extensive know-how in GPU performance maximization.

Following the supercomputer launch, PFN plans to increase the processing speed of its open source deep learning framework Chainer. They will further accelerate their research and development in the field of transportation systems, manufacturing, bio and healthcare industry which require a huge amount of computing resources. PFN will additionally consider the deployment of NVIDIA® Tesla® V100 GPUs, which are based on next-generation Volta GPU technology. NTT Com group will continue to support PFN's research and the commercialization of their developed solutions with AI-related technologies and platforms.

"NVIDIA is excited to see the launch of Preferred Networks' private supercomputer, built in partnership with NTT Com Group. Computing power is the source of competitive advantage for deep learning, the core technology of modern AI. We have high expectations that the new system will accelerate Preferred Networks' business and contribute to Japan's economic growth."

Masataka Osaki

NVIDIA Japan Country Manager, Vice President of Corporate Sales

Related links:

Chainer

Enterprise Cloud

Nexcenter

Notes

1. Chainer® is the trademark or the registered trademark of Preferred Networks, Inc. in Japan and other countries.
2. Other company names and product names written in this release are the trademarks or the registered trademarks of each company.

About Preferred Networks, Inc.

Founded in March 2014 with the aim of promoting business utilization of deep learning technology focused on IoT, PFN advocates Edge Heavy Computing as a way to handle the enormous amounts of data generated by devices in a distributed and collaborative manner at the edge of the network, driving innovation in three priority business areas: transportation, manufacturing and bio/healthcare. PFN develops and provides Chainer, an open source deep learning framework. PFN promotes advanced initiatives by collaborating with world leading organizations, such as Toyota Motor Corporation, Fanuc Corporation and the National Cancer Center.

https://www.preferred-networks.jp/en/

About NTT Communications Corporation

NTT Communications provides consultancy, architecture, security and cloud services to optimize the information and communications technology (ICT) environments of enterprises. These offerings are backed by the company’s worldwide infrastructure, including the leading global tier-1 IP network, the Arcstar Universal One™ VPN network reaching over 190 countries/regions, and over 140 secure data centers worldwide. NTT Communications’ solutions leverage the global resources of NTT Group companies including Dimension Data, NTT DOCOMO and NTT DATA.
www.ntt.com | Twitter@NTT Com | Facebook@NTT Com | LinkedIn@NTT Com

NTT PC Communications Incorporated

NTTPC Communications Incorporated (NTTPC), established in 1985 is a subsidiary of NTT Communications, is a network service and communication solution provider in Japanese telco market, the company has been the most strategic technology company of the group throughout of years. NTTPC launched the 1st ISP service of the NTT group, so called "InfoSphere" at 1995, and also launched the 1st Internet Data Center and server hosting services of Japan so called "WebARENA" at 1997. NTTPC have always started something new in ICT market.

http://www.nttpc.co.jp/english/