Question Fujitsu A64FX successor Monaka

[soresu]

Successor to Fujitsu's custom supercomputer ARM CPU A64FX named as Monaka, with ARMv9, SVE2 and 150 cores scheduled for 2026/27 release, apparently targetted at datacenters rather than supercomputer use cases.

Width of the SVE2 units is not declared, but it will be built on TSMC's N2 node.

Link.

 

[soresu]

Anandtech posted an article about it back in March this year.

 

[moinmoin]

This is quite some way out still. The text in the slide, "Providing overwhelming energy efficiency compared to CPUs release by 2027 from competitors", is quite the optimistic bet. Looking forward to seeing how that plays out.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Strange, why the shift in focus from HPC to datacentre?

 

[moinmoin]

Strange, why the shift in focus from HPC to datacentre?

Fujitsu A64FX was mainly built and sold for the Fugaku supercomputer, so my only guess is that a supercomputer project of comparable size doesn't exist (yet?) for Monaka so Fujitsu looks to sell more of it through regular channels.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Fujitsu A64FX was mainly built and sold for the Fugaku supercomputer, so my only guess is that a supercomputer project of comparable size doesn't exist (yet?) for Monaka so Fujitsu looks to sell more of it through regular channels.

A bit unfortunate. Fugaku/A64FX achieved what Intel never could with Larrabee and its successors. The simplicity of the programming model for Fugaku vs. other supercomputers alone should have made such a successor appealing to data scientists.

 

[soresu]

A bit unfortunate. Fugaku/A64FX achieved what Intel never could with Larrabee and its successors. The simplicity of the programming model for Fugaku vs. other supercomputers alone should have made such a successor appealing to data scientists.

I feel like Fugaku was also innovating on the ARM server concept itself with Fujitsu partnering with ARM to drive the development of SVE's first iteration among other things.

Now that those hurdles are already crossed they can just put out new chips based on A64FX, and whoever wants to use them can do so just as with Intel and AMD CPU options.

I think this is more like Fujitsu saying "stock ARM isn't the only option if you want moar SIMD grunt" to the datacenter crowd, while Monaka can probably still be used for exactly the same purpose as Fugaku.

Essentially this is Fujitsu trying to monetise all the hard work they put in here while the ARM server market is still somewhat in flux.