Large-scale AI cloud computing system “ABCI” upgraded to “ABCI 2.0”

May 10, 2021
AIST (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology)

Highlights

• “ABCI 2.0” has been generally available at 13:00 on May 10, 2021.
• The peak performance is 226.0 petaflops for single precision and 851.5 petaflops for half precision, which is 1.5 to 3 times that of the existing ABCI system.
• It will accelerate the use of ABCI by advanced AI research and development / application demonstrations and large-scale data holding companies in Japan.

Abstract

National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology [Chairman Kazuhiko Ishimura] (hereinafter referred to as “AIST”) Information and Ergonomics Area [Satoshi Sekiguchi] has been started providing services of the large-scale AI cloud computing system, “ABCI 2.0”, since 13:00 on May 10, 2021.

The existing system “AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure” (hereinafter referred to as “ABCI”) is a computing system designed and developed by AIST for the purpose of accelerating the development of artificial intelligence technology in Japan. It was introduced in the AI ​​data center building of the Kashiwa Center and started operation in August 2018. So far, domestic companies using ABCI have achieved remarkable results by using many institutions, including achieving the world’s fastest calculation speed in deep learning. In addition, there has been a great deal of interest in the characteristic power-saving operation. On the other hand, more than two years after the start of operation, there were issues such as a long waiting time before the start of use due to higher demand than expected. In addition, even higher computing power is required for advanced AI research and development and application demonstrations that require large-scale data processing.

To address these challenges, ABCI 2.0 has enhanced computing servers and storage systems equipped with the latest 960 GPUs with higher performance and lower power consumption than ABCI GPUs. ABCI 2.0 is operated integrally with the existing system. With this enhancement, peak performance is double precision 56.6 petaflops, single precision 226.0 petaflops, and half precision 851.5 petaflops. The peak performance is 1.5 to 3 times that of the existing system. In addition, the storage capacity is about 1.5 times, and the theoretical read / write performance is about 2 times.

The general availability of ABCI 2.0 is expected to accelerate the use of ABCI by advanced AI R & D and application demonstrations and domestic data holding companies.

Photograph of the appearance of ABCI

Photograph of a part of the added calculation server

Contacts

E-mail：application@abci.ai