rick@cs.arizona.edu (Rick Schlichting) (02/26/91)
[Dr. David Kahaner is a numerical analyst visiting Japan for two-years under the auspices of the Office of Naval Research-Asia (ONR/Asia). The following is the professional opinion of David Kahaner and in no way has the blessing of the US Government or any agency of it. All information is dated and of limited life time. This disclaimer should be noted on ANY attribution.] [Copies of previous reports written by Kahaner can be obtained from host cs.arizona.edu using anonymous FTP.] To: Distribution From: David K. Kahaner ONR Asia [kahaner@xroads.cc.u-tokyo.ac.jp] Re: Japanese computing report from S. Jarp CERN [sverre@cernvm.cern.ch] 23 Feb 1991 ABSTRACT. A discussion of high-end Japanese computing with needs of European high energy physics community in mind is presented. INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY. Mr. Sverre Jarp spent the summer of 1990 in Japan in order to study Japanese computers' relevance to the European community and to his laboratory (CERN). Jarp is very well qualified in this regard, as he is the Software Group Leader in the Data Handling Division of CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, in Geneva. Jarp was given an office at IBM's Tokyo Research Lab and used that as a base for trips to other laboratories and to vendors. I had several lengthy and insightful discussions with him during this time. Subsequently he has written a important report on his visit which he has given me permission to distribute (below). His main conclusions are as follows. * Japanese computer industry has mostly satisfied domestic demand and is now embarked on an effort to compete successfully in the export market. * Japanese component technology has been state-of-the-art for some time. Silicon improvements are still being pursued although several newer technologies are quite possible. * A year or two will be needed before the latest Japanese hardware, configurations, Unix systems, and applications will be available. * By 1993 Japanese computer vendors should have about the same proportion of the world-wide computer market (42%) as American vendors. * Europe should encourage competition between American and Japanese vendors, leading to lower prices, more software, and supplementary economic benefits for the general European community. * Europe should build its software industry as rapidly as possible to benefit from portability and open systems. * Europe should master system integration rather than producing individual hardware elements. * Jarp is skeptical about direct European competition with American and Japanese electronics firms in hardware systems. Readers of reports that I have written in Tokyo will find that Jarp's report contains many additional and helpful perspectives. I agree with his conclusions about Japan, perhaps emphasizing more the importance of the Japanese consumer electronics industry as the fuel for a growing computing industry. I am not in a position to comment about Europe. Jarp's report also contains appendices, giving some specifications of the latest supercomputers from Hitachi, Fujitsu, and NEC. Other appendices list supercomputers in Japan. These are especially difficult to keep up to date and to insure their accuracy. All such lists mostly use the same sources, including the US Department of Commerce, newspapers, private researchers, etc. The main differences are date of publication and arrangement. I have checked Jarp's list and feel that it is accurate. It essentially agrees with the one I distributed last year although it is organized rather differently. The report's sections are as follows. 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Japan's pursuit of economic power and technological leadership. 1.2 A vigorous computing industry 2 JAPAN'S DEMOGRAPHY AND GEOGRAPHY. 2.1 Relations with the West. Demography and geography 2.2 Does Japan Inc. Exist? 2.3 Exchange with the Western World 3 THE JAPANESE ELECTRONICS INDUSTRY 3.1 Japanese electronics companies 3.2 Overview of Fujitsu, Ltd. 3.3 Overview of Hitachi, Ltd. 3.4 Overview of Nippon Electric Company (NEC) 4 SUPERCOMPUTER EVOLUTION 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Initial development of Japanese supercomputers 4.3 High-end development philosophy 4.4 Installed base history 4.5 Comparison between Japan and Europe 4.6 CRAY in Japan 4.7 IBM in Japan 5 CURRENT JAPANESE SUPERCOMPUTERS AND MAINFRAMES 5.1 Introduction 5.2 NEC's SX series 5.3 Fujitsu's VP series 5.4 Hitachi's S-series Overview 5.5 Japanese mainframes 6 JAPANESE SYSTEM SOFTWARE AND COMPILERS 6.1 Proprietary systems 6.2 Manufacturers' involvement with UNIX 6.3 UNIX usage in Japan 6.4 UXP/M and Super-UX 6.5 Assemblers and compilers 6.6 Application software 7 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 7.1 The Japanese computer industry 7.2 Future evolution 7.3 Implications for Europe Appendix A NEC SX-2A and SX-3 model characteristics Appendix B Fujitsu VP-400E and VP-2600 model characteristics Appendix C Hitachi S-810 and S-820 model characteristics. Appendix D CRAY supercomputers in Japan Appendix E ETA supercomputers in Japan Appendix F Fujitsu supercomputers in Japan Appendix G Hitachi supercomputers in Japan Appendix H NEC supercomputers in Japan ------------------------------------------------------ A REVIEW OF JAPAN AND JAPANESE HIGH-END COMPUTERS. Sverre Jarp Computing and Networks Division European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) 1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland Tel: +41-22-767-49-44, or: +41-22-767-33-49 Fax: +41-22-767-71-55 Email: sverre@cernvm.cern.ch, or: sverre@cernvm.bitnet 25 January 1991 ABSTRACT -------- The author spent two months in Tokyo during the summer of 1990 studying the Japanese high-end computing scene with the aim of understanding how CERN (and the West in general) may be affected by the increasing strength of the Japanese computer companies. Several large Japanese manufacturers already have very interesting products on the hardware side, both general mainframes and supercomputers. Today, they claim to have the fastest systems available, and they are working on future technologies like Ga-As or Josephson junctions to further increase their strength. Up until now, however, the software and communications facilities have not been the strong point of the Japanese offerings. The issue is therefore to try to establish whether the standardisation of system software (via UNIX) and communications infrastructures, as well as the globalisation of the market place, will allow them to move in rapidly as a major supplier of high-end computing equipment. The main part of the report is made up of descriptions of the latest supercomputer systems offered by NEC, Fujitsu and Hitachi, as well as a brief overview of their operating systems and current installed base. A reference is made to the systems installed by IBM and CRAY in Japan. A comparison is made to the European supercomputer installed base. The fact that supercomputers were chosen is merely tactical, but these systems do convey very clearly the technological strength of a manufacturer since supercomputers are always built with state-of-the-art technology. The first two chapters of the report are aimed at providing background material for understanding Japan as a nation. The conclusion tries to predict what will happen in Europe in the large-scale computing area over the next few years, and offers the opinion of the author on how best to profit from the situation. DISCLAIMER ---------- Clearly this report (as every other report) reflects the author's background and experience. I have tried to absorb enormous amounts of information related to the topic, but the Japanese computing scene with its ramifications is broad and complex. Facts have been stated to the best of my awareness (and corrections are welcome). I have tried to be objective and to look at the Japanese computer manufacturers in comparison to others with neutral eyes. I have no illusions, however, that I have not always succeeded. The report is biased by the fact that supercomputer hardware was chosen to analyse the Japanese computing scene to the detriment of mainframes and/or an in-depth analysis of application software packages and their individual performance characteristics on selected platforms. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT --------------- This study was made possible due to support from IBM Switzerland, IBM Europe, and CERN. The author was also assisted by CRAY Switzerland as well as IBM Japan, CRAY Japan, Fujitsu Ltd., Hitachi Ltd, and Nippon Electric Company (NEC). A large number of good friends around the world should also be thanked. CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ======================= 1.1 Japan's pursuit of economic power and technological leadership --------------------------------------------------------------------- Japan with only 123 million people, half of the population and one twenty-fifth the geographical size of the United States, has now risen to become an economic giant. Although the US Gross National Product is still almost twice as big as that of Japan (5 trillion dollars against 2.7 trillions in 1989), the growth of Japan's GNP is higher and the GNP per capita overtook that in America a few years ago; additionally the Japanese economy is extremely solid, with a trade surplus of 65 billion dollars annually, whereas the US has a deficit of a similar size ( $ 50 billion in 1989) Japan has therefore become a country with formidable financial resources to back her broad electronics industry and her other critical industrial sectors. This report will not go deeply into the economic or the resulting political issues and the reasons behind them. What will be analysed in some depth, however, is the Japanese producers of large-scale computers, both mainframes and supercomputers, and try to indicate what their strengths or weaknesses are. The future of the vital domain of computer technology is certainly going to be decided between the triangle formed by the US (or the North American continent), the European countries, and the Pacific Rim (mainly Japan, but also Korea to some extent) over the next few decades. The reason for including Europe is the fact that after 1992 Europe will be the biggest single market in the world, and the belief that this will not only stimulate Japan and the US, but also the (embryonic) European computer industry itself. It is hoped that this report will help people in Europe understand Japan's success in building up a computer industry that is today both broad and strong. About 30 years ago, Japan was entirely dependent on American computing equipment (mainly made by IBM). To reduce their dependency on foreign systems, they employed a scheme of strong governmental support for reproducing other companies' computer designs and began to build up their own computer industry. For about two decades they were largely content to produce mainframes that imitated the IBM/370 systems, selling them in the local market with a Japanese MVS (Multiple Virtual Systems) look-alike operating system, or as plug-compatible machines abroad. The Japanese manufacturers would typically wait for IBM to make a new announcement, and then announce 'compatible' systems within a given time delay. In recent years we have seen several changes in this scenario: * First of all the Japanese companies now dominate the domestic market by providing an impressive 80 % of all computer equipment. Japanese technology is now state-of-the-art, and this has led to a self-assurance amongst the Japanese where they no longer wait for American vendors to announce in order to come out with similar products. * The large Japanese manufacturers have expanded beyond mainframes into supercomputers and are today claiming to have the fastest supercomputers on the market. * UNIX is about to remove the burden of having to stay compatible with IBM's proprietary operating system and should give the Japanese a greatly improved marketing platform for selling their systems in Europe and in the US. This report will look in detail at the three largest computer manufacturers (Fujitsu, Hitachi, and NEC) and their high-end computer products. A quick review of the situation of CRAY and IBM in Japan will also be undertaken. It was beyond the scope of this report to cover the other partners in the broad computer (and electronics) industry in Japan as well as new development areas like massively parallel computing. 1.2 A vigorous computing industry --------------------------------- The best demonstration of the vigour of the computer manufacturers is the list of events that occurred at around the same time as the author's visit to Japan (July - August 1990): May: Fujitsu's new supercomputers start shipping (VP-2000 series). June 12th: Hitachi announces new mainframes series (4-way M-880). July 4th: NEC announces new mainframe series (6-way ACOS-3800). July/Aug: Fujitsu announces ICL purchase. August: NEC SX-3 available for benchmarking. Aug. 30th: Fujitsu announces new VP models, new version of UNIX. Sept. 4th: Fujitsu announces new mainframe series (8-way M-1800) In particular the last announcement which happened "co-incidentally" the day before IBM made its biggest announcement in 25 years, can probably be taken as a clear sign from the Japanese that they want to be considered to be in a position of technological leadership. Chapter 2 Japan's Demography and Geography. =========================================== 2.1 Relations with the West. Demography and geography ----------------------------------------------------- As already mentioned Japan has 123 million inhabitants living on about 372 thousand square kilometres. This corresponds to a population density (331 inhabitants/square km) which is one of the highest in the world after Bangladesh, South Korea and Holland. The geographical size, however, corresponds to that of Finland in Europe or the state of Montana in the US. (The population in Montana is less than one million inhabitants). Japan consists of 4 big islands (Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu), and innumerable smaller ones. The main population lives on Honshu (78%), followed by Kyushu (11%), Hokkaido (5%), and Shikoku (4 %). The Japanese islands have always been rather hostile due to climatic and meteorological hardships. For this reason the population inhabits the plains that used to provide (and still provide) the best rice-growing capabilities. A large proportion of the Honshu population is consequently to be found in the Kanto plain surrounding Tokyo or the Kansai plain surrounding Osaka. The harsh climatic environment may be one of the factors that have led Japanese society to adopt rules for collective behaviour that are much more rigorously enforced than in Europe or in the US, and which seem to be at least part of the explanation for the Japanese economic success. 2.2 Does Japan Inc. Exist ? ---------------------------- Many people wonder whether "Japan Inc." exists or not. There seems at least to be a great deal of loyalty to the country. As mentioned earlier this may be linked to the way the Japanese had to structure their society simply to maximise the probability of survival on some rather inhospitable islands. Today one finds a lot of loyalty inside companies; the companies themselves are often faithfully integrated inside groups (Keiretsus or others). Furthermore the government through MITI (Ministry of Trade and Industry) is able to establish projects where there is patriotic participation across the industry sector, allowing for transfer of technology. The net result is a kind of a magnet which has a strong force because its individual domains are aligned. Some people may find this discussion misplaced, but the author believes that Japanese economical and technological strength must also be viewed against Japanese sociological order and behaviour. 2.3 Exchange with the Western World ------------------------------------- One of the West's big problems vis-a-vis Japan is the fact that so few Westerners go there, either to live or for a visit. Whereas in 1988 there were 195,000 Japanese living in North America (including Hawaii) and 80,000 in Europe, there are only 31,000 Americans and less than 10,000 Europeans in Japan. When we consider that the European population is about three times the Japanese one, this becomes an under-representation of a factor of about 25 ! Altogether the Japanese are keeping more than half a million people abroad to make sure Japanese interests are well covered in other countries. Many Europeans also stay abroad but, as described, they are very unlikely to be found in Japan. Similar exchange problems can be demonstrated with tourists. Whereas 7 million Japanese went abroad in 1988, only 1 million tourists visited Japan. Looking at the US one finds that 2.4 million Japanese visited the US, but only 200,000 Americans 'returned' the visit. Again the ratio is no better for Europe. It could be argued that the lack of first-hand experience with Japan leads to a clear lack of knowledge about the country in our society. We do not have adequate knowledge about the country, the people, their history, or their ambitions. Clearly both the language and the culture in Japan are reasons for some of the unwillingness on the part of Western people, but it is firmly believed that given the importance of Japan in today's world, the West has no other choice than to keep itself well informed about the Japanese. We need factual and first-hand information about Japan allowing us to judge their strengths as well as their weaknesses. Finally, the Japanese are in the privileged position that they master English well enough to be able to absorb all written material that is issued in the West. Our problem, however, is the fact that although a large amount of written material is issued in Japan every year, only very small portions of this material is ever read or translated into English (or other Western languages). Chapter 3 The Japanese Electronics Industry ================================================ 3.1 Japanese electronics companies ----------------------------------- This report does not cover all the Japanese companies in the semiconductor, electronics or computing field, like SONY, Matsushita, Toshiba, or Omron, but it is important to review how broad and strong the Japanese electronics industry really is. To that extent a list of the world's most profitable companies has been included. Although IBM is second in the list (after Nippon Telephone & Telegraph), the top of the list is packed with Japanese banks (Bank of Japan, no 3; Sumitomo Bank, no. 7; the Fuji Bank, no. 8; Mitsui Taiyo Kobe Bank, no. 10; Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, no.11; the Mitsubishi Bank, no. 12; Sanwa Bank, no. 14), followed by an impressive list of the main Japanese electronics companies. Hitachi 17 Matsushita Electric 24 Toshiba 40 NEC 50 SONY 61 Fujitsu 71 Nintendo 89 Mitsubishi Electric 95 SHARP 105 Sanyo Electric 106 In contrast, Europe's electronics industry can only point to Siemens (46) and BASF (158). Similarly, the United States (apart from IBM) can only point to HP (128), DEC (130), and Motorola (138). Clearly the Japanese success in computers is related to the success and the strength of the electronics and semiconductor industry itself. Additionally it seems important that the Japanese government through MITI has managed to get the large companies to line up behind government projects like the VLSI project, the 5th generation project (with the 6th coming), the 10 Gflop supercomputer project and now the Image-processing (Ga-As) project and others. The fact that the resulting implementations of a product can then be fairly similar across the participating companies, does not surprisingly seem to be a problem for the participants. The next sections will review NEC, Fujitsu, and Hitachi. All three companies are very large (in terms of annual sales) and they are all extremely active in the semi-conductor field and telecommunications, as well as in the field of general purpose computers and more recently supercomputers. All three companies enjoy a healthy annual growth, both in terms of revenue and number of employees. 3.2 Overview oF Fujitsu, Ltd. ----------------------------- Founded in 1935 Fujitsu is the 'youngest' of the three Japanese computer giants. It specialises in three fields; Information Processing (IP) which covers computers, peripherals and others; Telecommunications (TC) which covers switching systems and transmission systems; and Electronic Devices (ED) which covers semiconductors and electronic components. By comparing computer sales in Japan, one discovers that Fujitsu is the market leader with sales of about 1.4 trillion yen (approximately 14 billion Swiss francs) in 1989, ahead of IBM with 1.19 trillions, NEC with 1.17 trillions, and Hitachi with 0.92 trillions. Fujitsu also had the highest growth rate with 14.6%. Amongst its divisions IP represents 66% of total sales, TC 16% and EC 14% (with 4% other activities). The Fujitsu Group (including all subsidiaries) had 104,500 employees in FY89 and expanded to 115,000 employees in FY90. Total income amounted to 2.35 trillion yen in FY89 and 2.55 trillions in FY90. 3.3 Overview of Hitachi, Ltd. ----------------------------- Started in 1910 as an electrical repair shop for a copper-mining company in Japan, the Hitachi Group is now the 17th largest company in the world with five diversified operating divisions (Power Systems and Equipment; Consumer Products; Information and Communication Systems and Electronic Devices(ICS/ED); Industrial Machinery and Plants; Wire and Cable, Metals, Chemicals, and other Products). Total sales in FY89 were 6.38 trillion yen and the total staff was 274,000. In FY90 sales were 7.08 trillions and the staff had grown to 290,800. ICS/ED produces a very broad range of equipment including computers, computer terminals and peripherals, workstations, magnetic disks, Japanese word processors, Telephone exchanges, Facsimile equipment, Broadcasting equipment, Integrated circuits, semiconductors, picture tubes, CRT displays, Liquid crystal displays, magnetrons, test and measurement equipment, analytical instruments, medical electronics equipment. ICS/ED represents 33% of the total sales. 3.4 Overview of Nippon Electric Company --------------------------------------- Founded in 1899 as an importer and manufacturer of communications equipment such as telephone sets and switching equipment, NEC belongs to the Sumitomo group (Keiretsu), and used to be called the Sumitomo Electric Company. Today NEC is ranked 39 in the world with five branches to its corporate NEC-tree; Computers and Industrial Electrical Systems (43 % of total sales); Communications (26 %); Electrical Devices (19 %); Home Electronics (7 %); New Opportunities (5 %); all of it based on a solid technology foundation. Total sales in FY89 were 3.1 trillion yen and the total staff was 104,000. In FY90 sales were 3.3 trillions and the staff had grown to 115,000. It is the world's leading producer of semiconductors (ahead of Toshiba and Hitachi), one of the largest producers of telecommunications equipment (half the size of AT&T), and fourth computer manufacturer (behind IBM, DEC and Fujitsu). Chapter 4 Supercomputer evolution ================================== 4.1 Introduction ---------------- Less than a decade ago there were no Japanese supercomputers. The first models were announced in 1983. Naturally there had been prototypes earlier (like the Fujitsu F230-75 APU produced in two copies in 1978) but Fujitsu's VP-100 and Hitachi's S-810 were the first officially announced versions. NEC announced its SX-1 slightly later. The last seven years seem to have been hectic. Two generations of machines have been produced by each manufacturer and model improvements have also been offered during the life-span of these machines. During seven years about 150 systems have been installed in Japan (with relatively few installations outside the country), and a whole infrastructure of supercomputing has been established. All major universities have supercomputers, most of the large industrial companies and research centres as well; and there are well established supercomputer research institutes and industry observers. 4.2 Initial development of Japanese supercomputers -------------------------------------------------- Based on their own success with mainframes and the success of the CRAY-1 and the CDC Cyber 205, the Japanese decided in the late seventies to start producing vector-based supercomputers. The first versions were rather primitive, but in a short period of time all three manufacturers have gone from basic implementations to versions that today are considered to be amongst the best in the world. This is a remarkable achievement and underlines the fact that a company that possesses the underlying technology can relatively easily progress to the point of mastering logic design and the ensuing implementation complexity. The Japanese supercomputers were initially orientated towards parallel pipelines featuring multiple floating-point units always governed by one control processor. With the advent of the latest generation of systems from Fujitsu and NEC these supercomputers have added the dimension of multiprocessing; Hitachi's next system is bound to do the same. The change logically follows from the fact that only computing problems with long vectors and the right mix of floating-point instructions could expect to move towards peak performance in the early versions of these supercomputers. Multiprocessing adds a dimension of versatility to the hardware, but the price to pay is added complexity in the software requiring the basic operating system, the compilers, the libraries, and the applications to be made aware of this architectural feature. In contrast, the design of the CRAY X-MP took almost the opposite approach, with multiple CPUs, each featuring only one add and one multiply single-pipeline functional unit . It is expected that in the future all systems must include both multiprocessors as well as multiple pipelined functional units per processor to remain competitive. We should therefore expect the Japanese to increase multiprocessing to 8, 16, or more; and Cray and others to offer more pipelining per CPU. According to Cray Research their next machine, the C-90, will offer 16 CPUs, with two sets of pipelined add and multiply floating-point units per CPU. All three Japanese manufacturers currently employ the scheme of driving the vector processor at half of the scalar cycle time (by using a minor cycle time and a major cycle time). CRAY-2 employed a similar scheme of minor cycles, but both the CRAY X-MP and Y-MP employ full cycles. Whereas this is good for the vector performance, it can lead to an aggravating imbalance in the total system, since the scalar Flops are orders of magnitudes lower than the vector Flops. Such systems can run the risk of being suitable for only a narrow set of applications, demanding general-purpose systems for the applications that do not vectorise well. In other words they promote the classical front-end back-end combination. 4.3 High-end development philosophy ----------------------------------- Whereas the original supercomputers in Japan were developed from the existing mainframes by adding vector processors, a decade later the Japanese have now moved into a position where they concentrate the development on supercomputers and obtain the mainframe computers as a 'by-product' by employing the scalar processor of the supercomputer as the general-purpose processor in the mainframes. Clearly the memory system has to be somewhat redesigned, but the technology remains the same. This philosophy allowed NEC recently to announce the ACOS/3800 6-way mainframe processor based on the SX-3 and Fujitsu to announce the M-1800 8-way system based on the VP-2000 processor design. Financially this approach must be very attractive. It allows the R & D needed to develop competitive supercomputers to be amortised not just over a few dozen of these, but rather over several hundred supercomputers and mainframes combined. Vis-a-vis other manufacturers, CRAY in particular, this seems to be a strong competitive advantage for the Japanese and may provide one explanation of the apparent cost-effectiveness of their hardware systems. The philosophy of IBM and DEC of expanding their mainframes to super-computers by the addition of a vector facility should offer a similarly attractive cost advantage. 4.4 Installed base history -------------------------- Several lists exist of supercomputer installations in Japan. This report is based on an updated version of a list circulated by D. Kahaner (ONRFE, Tokyo). Appendices D - H list detailed installations for each manufacturer. By analysing the installation dates it can be shown that up until 1983 there were only two supercomputers in Japan (both Cray-1s). In 1983, as already stated, the first domestic systems were delivered, but until the end of 1985 there were less than 30 systems installed. 1986 - 1988 then provided three 'golden' years with about 30 super-computers installed each year. Although the lists available may be incomplete concerning the last two years, there is strong evidence to conclude that the Japanese market has now come to a point where market growth will definitely be lower. 1980 2 1983 3 1984 8 1985 13 1986 33 1987 29 1988 31 1989 16 1990 16 Total 151 Table 1 Systems installed by year in Japan. ------------------------------------------- 4.5 Comparison between Japan and Europe --------------------------------------- Although the aim of this report is to review high-end computing in Japan, it may be instructive to compare Europe and Japan in terms of supercomputer installations. In 1990 the Japanese distribution was thought to be the following (both excluding and including vendors' own installations). Company Manufacturer exclusive Inclusive Fujitsu 63 73 Hitachi 18 29 CRAY 26 26 NEC 18 21 CDC/ETA 2 2 Total 127 151 Table 2 Japanese supercomputers by vendor. ------------------------------------------ A certain subset of IBM's 3090 should be added to these numbers. The Department of Defense (DoD) rules for export of supercomputers would suggest the addition of all 3090 systems (model 180 or higher) with at least one vector facility and all 3090-600S or 600J (VF or not). It is estimated that about 65 such systems exist in Japan, but it was not possible to establish a detailed list of IBM installations for the verification of this number. The number of Vector Facilities is estimated to be about 110 . In Europe the supercomputer distribution is quite different according to recent estimates: CRAY 71 Siemens/Fujitsu 10 Amdahl/Fujitsu 7 CDC/ETA 6 NEC 2 Total 96 Table 3 European supercomputers by vendor. ------------------------------------------ The IBM systems (DoD-categorised 3090s) exceeds 100. One noticeable difference is the European Academic Supercomputing Initiative (EASI) that promoted 3090-600 systems (with 6 VFs) in several European Academic Institutes. A total of 18 EASI sites are in existence. They are RWTH Aachen (G), CEA Paris (F), CERN Geneva (CH), CINECA Bologna (I), CIRCE Paris (F), CNUSC Montpellier (F), DESY Hamburg (D), ETH Zurich (CH), FCR Barcelone (E), GSI Darmstadt(D), IN2P3 Lyon (F), KFK Karlruhe(D), KUL Leuven (B), Rome University (I), SARA Amsterdam (NL), Vienna University (A), TU Braunschweig (D), UMEA Skelleftea (S). Adding RAL (UK), IBM Bergen Scientific Centre (N), and ECSEC in Rome (I) where 3090-600/VF systems also exist one finds that scientific or university sites alone account for more VFs than Japan has in total. Nevertheless, the total sum of supercomputers, about 200, is the same. This leads to the conclusion that the installed base of supercomputers per capita is at least a factor three better in Japan than in Europe. Given that supercomputers are basically advanced tools for industry, research and education, this imbalance represents a real handicap for the competitiveness of Europe. 4.6 CRAY in Japan. ------------------ As already mentioned, CRAY has operated in Japan since 1980. Today, 26 systems are installed, mainly in commercial organisations. These systems are a mixture of CRAY-1s, X-MPs, CRAY-2s, and Y-MPs. Most of them have now been converted to UNICOS. Relatively few systems have the largest configuration and quite a few X-MPs or Y-MPs exist with only one or two CPUs. There may be two reasons for this. One could be the fact that CRAY's prices are considered high, especially given that the systems must be purchased (most domestic systems are leased) with little or no discount. The other explanation may be that the prime need of the Japanese is to get access to applications that run only on the CRAY, without a need for the maximum CPU capacity. A clear need for application access is, for instance, demonstrated by the Japanese car manufacturers that have acquired CRAY systems to run an application called PAM-crash for car crash simulation. In spite of the relatively small penetration of CRAY systems in Japan, they are nevertheless considered as prestigious trend-setters in the market for several reasons. The CRAY systems are architecturally very well balanced, UNICOS is seen as a mature supercomputer operating system and most importantly, a large number of applications (more than 600) exist for the CRAY. With the CRAY Y-MP now installed by the Tohoku University, which has traditionally used only NEC equipment, CRAY may have started to penetrate seriously the academic market. 4.7 IBM in Japan. ----------------- IBM has been present in the Japanese market for a very long time. In the early sixties, when the Japanese government decided to react to foreign dominance, IBM controlled about 80% of the market. Although the Japanese have reversed this situation IBM still plays a very important part in the Japanese computing scene. In 1989 IBM sold equipment worth 1.19 trillion yen (about $ 8.5 billion, equivalent to approximately 15% of IBM's world-wide sales). The commercial companies, in particular, seem to be large IBM customers. It is not unusual to see computer centres with several 3090 systems installed (all running MVS) and huge DASD farms with hundreds of Gigabytes. In total it is believed that several hundred 3090 systems exist in Japan. The commercial companies seem to appreciate IBM for their total system integration and well-balanced systems. IBM is able to offer a wide range of peripherals that go with their mainframes, as well as a huge set of applications on top of MVS, both from IBM and from third-party vendors. As already stated, IBM has not had the same penetration in the scientific market in Japan. There has been no equivalent to the EASI programme and the total number of Vector Facilities is rather limited. The recently announced IBM/9000 series will provide IBM with a more powerful system with which to compete in the future. Each VF should offer a peak performance of 400 Mflops. Chapter 5 Current Japanese Supercomputers and Mainframes ======================================================== 5.1 Introduction ---------------- This chapter describes the current offerings from NEC, Fujitsu, and Hitachi. A comparison is made with the previous versions. Appendices A, B, and C contain the specifications of the supercomputer models discussed. 5.2 NEC's SX series ------------------- Overview -------- The SX-3 series is the second full generation of production-level NEC supercomputers. In 1984 NEC announced the SX-1 and SX-2 and started delivery in 1985. The first two SX-2 systems were domestic deliveries to Osaka University and Sumitomo Trading Company. The SX-2 had multiple pipelines with one set of add and multiply floating point units each. With a cycle time of 6 nanoseconds, each pipelined floating-point unit could peak at 167 Mflops. With four pipelines per unit and two FP units, the peak performance was about 1.3 Gflops. Due to limited memory bandwidth and other issues the sustained performance in benchmark tests was typically less than half the peak value. For some reason the SX-1 had a slightly higher cycle time than the SX-2 (7 ns). In addition it had only half the number of pipelines. The maximum execution rate was 570 Mflops. At the end of 1987, NEC improved its supercomputer family with the announcement of the A-series which gave some improvements to the memory and I/O bandwidth. The top model, the SX-2A, had the same theoretical peak performance as the SX-2. A family of lower speed systems included the SX-JA (250 Mflops), the SX-1EA (330 Mflops), and the SX-1A (665 Mflops). NEC SX-3 -------- In 1989 NEC announced a rather revolutionary new model with several important changes. New technology was used with logic chips that have the highest density in industry today. The vector cycle time was halved, the number of pipelines was doubled, but most significantly NEC added multiprocessing capability to its new series. The new top of the range currently features four independent arithmetic processors (each with a scalar and a vector processing unit); and NEC has pushed its performance by more than one order of magnitude to an impressive peak of 22 Gflops (from 1.33 on the SX-2A). From initial benchmark results, one would deduce that the SX-3 is now the most powerful system in the world. The logic LSI of the SX-3 has 20,000 gates per chip and a gate switching time delay of 70 picoseconds per gate. This is a major technological jump from what NEC applied in the SX-2 series, namely 1,000 gates and 250 ps time delay. The packaging consists of Multi-Chip Packages (MCP) that are made of a ceramic substrate upon which the LSIs are mounted directly. A board is 22.5 x 22.5 cm2 and can contain a maximum of 100 LSIs. It is water cooled by the cold plate method. The scalar unit has 128 64-bit registers. It decodes all instructions and runs in parallel to the vector unit. It is a RISC-based design using scalar pipelines to speed up execution. Nevertheless, the cycle time is the full machine cycle (5.8 ns) and peak scalar Flops are roughly two orders of magnitude lower than peak vector performance. This fact highlights the need to push applications in the direction of full vectorisation in order to exploit the SX-3 at its best. The scalar processor has a 64 KB cache and a 4 KB instruction stack with 1.6 ns access time. The cache size is no bigger than it was in the SX-2. The processor has a sophisticated branch prediction mechanism built into the instruction stack hardware. The instruction format is either 64-bit with memory addresses included (for load, store and branch instructions), or 32-bit for arithmetic operations (specifying three registers). Unlike Hitachi and Fujitsu, NEC's basic instruction set is not compatible with that of IBM. The scalar processor supports 64-bit integers directly in native hardware. The vector processor is equipped (in the largest configuration) with four pipelines integrating four floating-point units (two add and two multiply). The compilers will optimise the vector performance automatically by scheduling vector instructions on all the parallel hardware, but will have to be enhanced to cope with parallel execution. The SX-3 can cope with CRAY and IBM floating-point-format (in hardware). IEEE formats can be expected in future systems, but not in the SX-3. Below is a detailed overview of the various SX-3 models and their corresponding peak performance values. SX-3 Model 11 12 14 22 24 42 44 Arithmetic Processors (AP) 1- 1- 1- 2- 2- 4- 4- Add/Mult pipelined units -1 -2 -4 -2 -4 -2 -4 Add/Mult FP units 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 Vector regs (KB/AP) 36 72 144 72 144 72 144 Max speed (Gflops) 1.37 2.75 5.5 5.5 11 11 22 Table 4 Model differences for the SX-3 supercomputer. ----------------------------------------------------- Primary memory was based on 256 Kb SRAMs with 20 ns access time. NEC has announced that this will be changed to 1 Mb memory chips in 1991. The maximum memory configuration will then be expanded from 2 GB to 8 GB. The total memory bandwidth is subdivided into two halves (with two processors each) which in turn feature two vector load and one vector store paths as well as one scalar load and one scalar store paths. Like its predecessor, the SX-3 is probably unable to offer the memory bandwidth needed to sustain peak performance unless most operands are contained in the vector registers. The current maximum size of the external memory unit (XMU) is 16 GB based on 1 Mb DRAMs with 70 ns access time. By changing to 4 MB DRAMs in 1991 NEC will increase the external memory to 64 GB. This is an incredible memory size. (How many people remember 64 KB as a respectable memory size!) The system allows eight bytes to be transferred from the XMU to memory per minor clock cycle, giving a transfer speed of 2.75 GB/s. There can be a maximum of four I/O processors (IOPs), each with a 250 MB/s throughput. The channels can be 3, 6, or 20 MB/s (with a maximum of 64 channels/IOP). High-speed channels operate as eight pairs of 100 MB/s channels directly through Direct Memory Access (DMA). NEC has an agreement with Ultranet and will provide a HPPI interface in 1991. NEC has started shipping uni-processor versions of the SX-3 to Europe. The University of Cologne has received a SX-3/11 and The Dutch Aerospace Lab, NLR, will receive a SX-3/12 in May 1991. The Swiss government will probably install a dyadic version in the second half of 1991. Four processor versions of the SX-3 are not expected before 1992. 5.3 Fujitsu's VP series ----------------------- Overview -------- The VP-2000 series is the second generation of full production-level Fujitsu supercomputers. In 1977 they produced the first supercomputer prototype called the F230-75 APU that was a pipelined vector processor added to a scalar processor. In 1983 they came out with the VP-200 and VP-100 systems, which later spun off the low-end VP-50 and VP-30 systems. In 1986 came the VP-400 (with twice as many pipelines as the VP-200) and as of mid-1987 the whole family became the E-series with the addition of an extra (multiply-add) pipelined floating point unit that boosted the performance potential by 50%. Thanks to the flexible range of systems in this generation (VP-30E to VP-400E), and other reasons such as good marketing and a broad range of applications, Fujitsu became the largest domestic supplier with 63 systems. VP-2000 series -------------- Announced in 1989, and available since March/April 1990, is the VP-2000 family with a peak performance of 5 Gflops. Fujitsu's design philosophy (like the other Japanese manufacturers) has been centred around the original APU design where the Vector Processor was a distinctly separate unit from the scalar unit. Emphasis was put on multiple pipelines with multiple floating-point units. The VP-2000 series is the first Fujitsu supercomputer with multiple scalar or vector processors. The VP-2000 system was initially announced with four vector performance levels (model 2100, 2200, 2400, and 2600) where each level could have either one of two scalar processors (corresponding to a model /10 or a mo del /20). The VP-2400/40, announced end-August 1990, doubles the number of processors compared to the VP-2400/20, and will have a peak vector performance similar to the VP-2600. The following table explains the relationship of the Fujitsu models. VP-2000 Model 2100 2200 2400 2400 2600 m.40 vector cycle time 4 4 4 3.2 3.2 vector processors (VPs) 1 1 1 2 1 scalar processors 2 2 2 4 2 vector Fl.point units 5 7 7 7 7 Mult/Add. Fl.point units 2 4 4 4 4 Pipelines/VP 1 1 2 4 4 vector regs per scalar unit (KB) 32 32 64 64 64 max speed (Gflops) 0.5 1 2 5 5 Table 5 Model differences for the VP-2000 series. ------------------------------------------------- Like the other Japanese manufacturers, the model range is basically constructed by removing hardware elements from the top model. Firstly the pipelines are reduced from four to two and then to one, and finally one of the two sets of add and multiply units is removed. The memory pipes are reduced in a similar fashion. The logic LSI has 15,000 gates per chip and a propagation delay of 80 ps/gate. This is a very impressive level of integration although the corresponding NEC figures are slightly better. Both Fujitsu and NEC seem to be at the very leading edge of VLSI today. The very high integration in the VP-2000 series enables the entire scalar processor to sit on just one multi-layer glass ceramic board of 61 layers, which allows elimination of off-board signal delays for the processor. The board is 24.5 x 24.5 cm 2 and can contain a maximum of 144 LSIs. The scalar unit has a cycle time of 6.4 ns and is connected to a 128 KB buffer storage with an access time of 1.6 ns. This very fast Logic-and-RAM LSI is built up of 64 Kbit chips with 3500 gates. The same chips are used for the vector registers. In Fujitsu's design, the vector processor sits between two scalar processors which act as instruction processors. The vector processor can be fed from either. Having twice as many scalar processors as vector processors can be seen as an effort to improve the balance between scalar and vector performance. The memory system can be configured with 2 GB of real memory using the latest LSI technology with 35 ns 1 Mb SRAM chips. The Secondary Subsystem Unit (SSU) can have up to 8 GB of memory using 1 Mb DRAM (100 ns) chips and Fujitsu has declared that it will move to 4 Mb DRAMs in 1991 this allowing second-level memory systems of 32 GB. Previous machines have been heavily criticised for the lack of memory throughput. The VP-400 series had only one fetch/store path to memory that ran at 4.5 GB/s. This has been improved in the VP-2000 series, but is probably not sufficient in all cases (in particular where all operands and the results must be fetched or replaced). As already stated Fujitsu has been shipping the new series since April 1990. The first two VP-2600 systems were delivered to the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission (JAERI). Via Siemens at least one system has also been imported to Germany (a VP2400/10 at the University of Karlsruhe). Amdahl marketed the previous version of the VP systems (after having added MVS support). It has announced that it will not market the VP-2000 series. 5.4 Hitachi's S-series Overview ------------------------------- Hitachi differs from the two other manufacturers in a couple of aspects. Firstly it does not export its supercomputers and secondly the current offering is somewhat out-of-date compared to the latest systems from NEC and Fujitsu. In this report the S-820 is therefore treated less thoroughly than the other systems. Nevertheless, the S-820 should be judged on the technology it represented at first shipment date, and Hitachi should be judged on the technology it possesses in general. It is believed that a new supercomputer from Hitachi will be announced during 1991. The S-820 series ---------------- Appendix C summarises the main characteristics of the two generations of supercomputers manufactured by Hitachi. The S-820 system offers four performance levels (m.20, m.40, m.60, and m.80) corresponding to the number of pipelines per floating point unit. The lowest model has an 8 ns vector cycle time. The logic LSI has 5,000 gates per chip and a propagation delay of 250 ps/gate. The scalar unit has a cycle time of 8 ns (major cycle time) and is connected to a 256 KB buffer storage with an access time of 4.5 ns. This bipolar RAM is built up of 16 Kbit chips whereas the faster LSI for the vector registers has 2,500 gates, 6.9 Kb capacity and an access time of 2.5 ns. S-820 Model 20 40 60 80 Vector cycle time 8 4 4 4 Mult/Add. pipeline units 3 3 3 3 Vector pipeline units 5 5 5 5 Pipelines inside unit 1 1 2 4 Vector regs per scalar unit (KB) 32 32 64 128 Data bus (8B/4ns) 1 2*1 2*2 2*4 Max speed (Gflops) 0.375 0.75 1.5 3 Table 6 Model differences for the S-820 supercomputer. ------------------------------------------------------ The memory system can be configured with 512 MB of real memory using a technology with 20 ns 1 Mb BiCMOS chips. The Extended Storage can have up to 12 GB of memory using 1 Mb DRAM (120 ns) chips. Hitachi has put great emphasis on a fast memory although this has meant limiting it to maximum 512 MB. The memory bandwidth (2 words per pipe per vector cycle) is a respectable achievement, but it is not enough to keep all functional units busy (if memory access is needed for each add, multiply, and generated result). The I/O processor supports 64 channels and half of them can be 9 MB optical channels. The total I/O capacity is 288 MB/s. 5.5 Japanese mainframes ----------------------- As already described in section 1.2, all three Japanese manufacturers announced new mainframe systems between July and September 1990. These mainframes are all based on the scalar processor of the supercomputer from that company with a higher level of multiprocessing and a different memory system. The two-level cache is, for instance, one manifestation of this difference. The following table lists the latest announcements: Mainframe Cycle time Max.CPU config. Commercial MIPS Delivery Hitachi M-880 8.0 ns 4 way 155 4Q90 Fujitsu M-1800 6.4 ns 8 way 325 3Q91 NEC ACOS/3800 5.8 ns 6 way 375 3Q91 Table 7 Latest generation of Japanese mainframes. ------------------------------------------------- Hitachi and Fujitsu offer their systems also as plug-compatible systems to IBM abroad. Fujitsu offers systems via their 47% share in Amdahl who licenses the technology and makes the systems compatible, and Hitachi does it via Comparex, Olivetti, and Hitachi Data Systems. NEC does not offer IBM compatible systems, but is expected to announce UNIX-support for its ACOS/3800 in the export market (as well as domestically). The MIPS rates are estimates of commercial MIPS. In a scientific environment the performance is not known, but both the Fujitsu processors and the NEC processors are estimated at about 30 Mflops (scalar) for the LINPACK 100 x 100 test. All three vendors are expected to announce 8-way systems as the maximum configuration of this machine generation. Chapter 6 Japanese System software and compilers ================================================ 6.1 Proprietary systems ----------------------- As already explained, the Japanese supercomputers originally grew out of the mainframe families. The corresponding operating systems did the same, and since the Japanese domestic operating systems were all inspired by IBM's MVS, these mainframe systems also invaded the supercomputers. Fujitsu had MSP, Hitachi had VOS3, and NEC had SXOS. The advantage for domestic installations that possessed both mainframes and supercomputers was the 'de facto' compatibility between the two, but both the European and the US market refused to get seriously interested in these systems. 6.2 Manufacturers' involvement with UNIX ---------------------------------------- With the latest series of supercomputers and mainframes the Japanese manufacturers have announced a serious interest in UNIX. Fujitsu has had a version of UTS (UTS/M), which it obtained from Amdahl in 1985, available on its mainframes since 1986 (native since 1987). With the announcement of the VP-2000 series Fujitsu initially announced a VPO (Vector Processing Option) to make UTS/M into a supercomputer operating system, but it has now announced a consolidated UNIX offering for both environments, 'UXP/M', which will be based on System V, release 4 and shipped in the middle of 1991. NEC has also announced its version of UNIX, Super-UX, for its supercomputers, not (yet?) for its mainframes. NEC will also ship their UNIX-version in the first half of 1991. Both manufacturers base their systems on AT&T System V and are members of UNIX International. Hitachi has not announced UNIX for its high-end systems, but is expected to do so with the announcement of its next supercomputer generation. Hitachi is a member of OSF as well as UNIX International. In section 4.4 it was speculated that the Japanese market is experiencing a limited growth as far as supercomputers are concerned. This can be interpreted as an additional argument why it is vital for the Japanese manufacturers to offer UNIX to satisfy the export market. 6.3 UNIX usage in Japan ----------------------- In the domestic market UNIX is available in certain sectors. Workstation systems are almost exclusively based on UNIX. The domestic market leaders are HP/Apollo, SUN, and Sony, all with about 25 - 30% of the market each. Beyond the workstation segment CRAY has largely converted its customer base from COS to UNICOS. This is, of course, a marginal UNIX penetration seen from a global market perspective, but one should not underestimate CRAY's influence as a trend-setter in supercomputer software. Some installations (universities and research centres) run UTS/M as a parallel offering to the domestic MSP system, but with little real emphasis until now. It is therefore believed that the conversion to UNIX in the domestic market in Japan will be relatively slow and that the Japanese manufacturers will initially target their UNIX systems to the export market. This could imply a heavy burden on the first foreign companies as they will have to get involved in debugging and enhancing these versions of UNIX on large systems, in a similar fashion to the very early customers of CRAY's UNICOS. 6.4 UXP/M and Super-UX ---------------------- Both NEC and Fujitsu have to repeat what CRAY did several years ago, namely convert UNIX from a time-sharing system to a highly reliable and sophisticated operating system for a supercomputer. The changes that are necessary are rather fundamental; kernel modifications for the detailed support of the architecture, the multiprocessor support, the memory management scheme, the I/O subsystem, the scheduler, etc. A batch system, NQS (Network Queuing System), has to be integrated and significantly enhanced. The file system needs modifications both for speed improvements, large file sizes, and complexity. I/O drivers for the full set of peripherals must be integrated. Reliability features need to be added to make sure the system software can keep the machine up all the time. This is no simple task, but a good UNIX implementation has become a requirement for the Japanese manufacturers (at least in the scientific export market). SUPER-UX will start shipping early in 1991 (release 1.1). It is based on System V release 3 with many BSD extensions. In addition to the general improvements already mentioned, it will come with a Supercomputer File System that is implemented in parallel to the System V file system (SVFS). It will offer support for Ethernet, FDDI, and HPPI networks including NSC's DX and Ultranet. UXP/M is in a similar situation. Its predecessor UTS/M + VPO (vector processing option) started shipping in 4Q90. The file system has been greatly enhanced with several options such as asynchronous I/O, bufferless I/O, high-speed I/O via secondary memory, etc. Furthermore, NQS, memory management, reliability improvements for hardware and software as well as improved systems management facilities have had to be integrated. 6.5 Assemblers and compilers ---------------------------- First some words about assemblers. Interestingly enough neither NEC nor Fujitsu offered the assembler to their customers on their previous supercomputer systems. Hitachi did offer it after domestic pressure from the user community. Today the assembler is made available both for the SX-3 and the VP-2000 series. For code optimisation and complex coding in certain areas assembly programming can still be an important asset in maximising the use of a supercomputer. Most supercomputer programs, however, rely on a highly optimised FORTRAN compiler. In the past the Japanese FORTRAN compilers have been optimised for single-task vector processing. With the introduction of multiprocessing hardware a new dimension of parallel execution has been opened for the supercomputer users, but at the cost of complex additions to the compiler itself. Language extensions for user-controlled parallelism as well as automatic parallelisation techniques have to be added. Both macrotasking at the subroutine level and microtasking at the loop or statement level must be dealt with. NEC and Fujitsu will start offering these capabilities as of 1991, but an additional period for refining the techniques in light of the experience with real-life applications in the field must be included. 6.6 Application software ------------------------ It is beyond the scope of this report to provide an in-depth review of the application software available on the Japanese platforms. Given the on-going effort to offer UNIX as the preferred operating system at least abroad, it is believed that such a survey should be undertaken when the UNIX offering is mature and the porting of applications has been carried out on a massive level. The Japanese manufacturers are extremely keen to be able to offer the same applications on their platforms as CRAY. For this reason both NEC and Fujitsu have established competence centres and collaborations in the United States. In certain cases there will be political pressure to stop applications being ported to Japanese platforms. This is the case today with PAM-crash which is a vital applications package for automobile crash simulation and certification. Chapter 7 Summary and Conclusions ================================= 7.1 The Japanese computer industry ---------------------------------- This report has tried to demonstrate that the Japanese seem to be succeeding in what is thought to have been the two legs of their national computing strategy: * Create computing solutions (hardware and software) that will satisfy the domestic demands as much as possible. * Enhance or adapt these solutions so that they will compete successfully in the export market. The Japanese have largely fulfilled the first goal by acquiring a share of about 80% (revenue-based) of the domestic market whereas in the sixties they achieved a mere 20%. It is interesting to note that this success is based on a very broadly-based computer industry as demonstrated in Chapter 3. On the export market Fujitsu and Hitachi have had an initial strategy to operate as Plug Compatible Manufacturers (PCMs) to IBM. This has allowed them to penetrate both the American market via Amdahl and HDS (Hitachi Data Systems) as well as the European market via HDS, Comparex (Siemens/BASF), Olivetti, and Amdahl. As long as this continues to be a lucrative market these companies are expected to stay put. Nevertheless the general trend to UNIX and Open Systems is believed to gradually move the emphasis away from proprietary systems. The Japanese manufacturers have clearly understood the importance of this shift and should offer complete UNIX systems for both mainframes and supercomputers within the near future (Fujitsu has already announced its UXP/M for both environments). To secure the success of this effort the Japanese companies have all established centres in Europe or the United States to ease porting operations and capture new trends and evolutions in the rapidly moving UNIX area. Japanese component technology has been state-of-the-art for some time already. Whether one considers chip density, switching speed or other technological factors, the Japanese compete successfully with everybody else in the world. With the latest series of integrated mainframes or supercomputers the Japanese have also demonstrated that they are now strong players who want to act as market leaders, and not as complacent followers any longer. They have reached the stage where their integrated products have the same complexity in terms of multi-processing or memory subsystems as their competition. Their strategy is now to offer these hardware systems with open system software to a world-wide market. To create a balanced view of the situation it must be kept in mind that some of the hardware and software features described in this report are not yet fully available. A year or two may still be needed by the Japanese manufacturers to be able to offer their latest hardware systems, in their largest configurations, with a fully developed and debugged UNIX system and a full range of applications. 7.2 Future evolution -------------------- In the near future the Japanese will continue to enhance their systems to improve their competitiveness in the market place. By 1993 they are expected to have the same proportion as the Americans of the world-wide computer market (about 42% each). NEC, Hitachi, and Fujitsu should all by then be selling mainframes and supercomputers with solid UNIX operating systems and a broad spectrum of applications. Follow-on models of the existing systems can be expected, either as new families or as upgrades within the existing families. New players in the high-end computer market can also be expected. Matsushita has already announced its intention to compete in the supercomputer market in the future. Beyond today's systems the Japanese are evaluating several approaches to improving their products. Silicon-based improvements are being pursued, and Hitachi has already announced a laboratory version of its 64 Mbit DRAM. Memories should therefore become larger and larger with the advances in memory technology. All manufacturers will pursue the race for lower cycle times (approaching the 'magic' 1 ns cycle). Because of inherent limitations of silicon chips this race could bring out innovative new technologies such as Ga-As or Josephson junctions, both of which have already been explored inside the Japanese research labs for quite some time. Integration into commercial products is believed to depend more on what the competitors can achieve than anything else. Fujitsu has, for instance, developed the HEMT (High Electron Mobility Transistor) which is a variant of the Ga-As technology with promising features both in terms of reduced heat dissipation and greatly improved switching time. The company is already producing 64 Kb memory chips based on HEMT and should offer integrated circuits in the near future. Although traditional architectures will continue to dominate the market for the next few years, the Japanese are also seriously interested in other architectural approaches. Massively-parallel systems are believed to be the next evolutionary step in the sophistication of their systems. 7.3 Implications for Europe --------------------------- One of the purposes of this report was to understand the implications for Europe of the current strength of the Japanese computer manufacturers. Unlike the Japanese themselves, the Europeans have not managed to build up an internal computer industry that has sufficient strength to compete with the Americans. Europe has therefore been a faithful acquirer of American main-frames and supercomputers (with the notable exception of a few Japanese systems). In 1993 Europe will be the biggest united market in the world and vital to every large computer manufacturer that wants to succeed in the long term. For the Old World it is critical to anticipate the implications of this privileged position. After this study (the author has also been involved with American computer manufacturers for the last twenty years) it is believed that Europe should initiate a policy based on the following principles: * Adopt an immediate strategy of encouraging a strong and healthy competition in the European market place between the Americans and the Japanese computer manufacturers. This could lead to lower prices as well as better and more varied software and hardware offerings. Manufacturers should also be told that Europe expects supplementary benefits in terms of local investment in factories and research and development laboratories, which would bring additional employment opportunities and tax money to our communities. This strategy should also ensure that Europe becomes as well equipped with supercomputers as Japan (or the US for that matter) and therefore maintains European competitiveness. * Europe should build up a strong software industry as rapidly as possible. This industry should profit from the Open Systems penetration and build portable application packages that will satisfy not only European demands but will also allow European software products to compete successfully on a worldwide basis. Europe has strong traditions in software and, although the Americans are also very strong software builders, we can probably profit from the fact that our demands are more complex and diversified than the those of the United States. How many times have we experienced American software products that do not cope with the intricate production environments in Europe? Since software is currently also the weak point in Japan's computer strategy, we would have an excellent chance of providing products for their systems both domestically and abroad. This does, of course, presuppose that we become 'truly' European in our activities. If we focus solely on regional demands and pursue only local market opportunities we will not achieve this goal. On the other hand this strategy should not require the existence of huge companies like the Japanese electronics giants. We can encourage small and dynamic software houses to help us achieve this goal. * The third element in our strategy should be system integration. The future of computing will be very complex. Computer manufacturers will bring innumerable platforms to the market from hand-held micro-computers to Tera-flop supercomputers. In addition vast numbers of peripherals, multiple connectivity options, and evolving network protocols will all be elements that will contribute to a high-level of complexity in our data-processing environments, and the only realistic option is to assume that the issue will not get simpler over time. Computer users, however, will demand applications and systems that give a unified view of distributed software and databases. In the author's opinion it is, therefore, much more important to master the aspects of system integration than to produce the individual hardware elements. Nevertheless it assumes broad-minded companies that can evaluate the advantages of individual computing elements and produce both a vision and follow up the vision with a solution. The broadness of the vision should not be the limits of Europe in 1993, it should be the limits of the globe. Japan and its activities must absolutely be an integral part of it on par with the US. In contrast, the author is rather sceptical about direct European competition with the American and Japanese electronics giants as far as hardware systems are concerned. Siemens will, we hope, continue to be present on the list of the world's largest companies, but up until now it has in no way been able to initiate a computer hardware strategy analogous to that of the Japanese companies discussed in this report. On the contrary, the supercomputers sold by Siemens are obtained directly from Fujitsu and the large mainframes offered by Comparex (a joint Siemens/BASF company) are Hitachi systems. There will probably be niche opportunities, and Europe should continually try to explore the possibility of producing systems where added value is given to an integrated computer product even if the components are largely bought off the shelf in Japan or the US. In recapitulation: ------------------ Up until now, computers were mainly supplied to Europe by the US. In the future they should be acquired from both the US and Japan. Rather than hoping for Europe to become a computer supplier of the same calibre as these two, we should exploit fully this competitive situation as well as the opportunities for providing value-added software solutions and highly qualified system integration. Appendix A NEC SX-2A and SX-3 model characteristics. ==================================================== Table 1 Main features of the last two generations of NEC supercomputers ----------------------------------------------------------------------- System SX-2A SX-3 Scalar processors 1 4 Scalar cycle time (ns) 6 5.8 Vector processors 1 4 Vector cycle time (ns) 6 2.9 Gates in logic 1,000 20,000 Switching time (ps) 250 70 Cache technology/chip density 1 Kb bipol.RAM 40 Kb +7K gates Cache access time (ns) 3.5 1.6 Cache size (KB/CPU) 64 64 Vector regs. (KB/CPU) 80 144 Floating-point units 2 (Mult/Add) 4 (2 Mult/Add) Pipelines per F.P. unit 4 4 Max Gflops 1.3 22 Memory interleave 512 way 1024 way Memory transfer rate (GB/s) 11 80 Main memory technology 256 Kb SRAM 256 Kb SRAM Memory access time (ns) 40 20 Max. memory (GB) 1 2 Second-level memory 256 Kb SRAM 1 Mb DRAM Access time (ns) 70 Max. memory (GB) 8 16 Transfer rate to main (GB/s) 1.3 2.75 I/O units 1 4 Total I/O throughput 192 MB/s 1 GB/s Initial shipment date June 88 Sept.90 Appendix B Fujitsu VP-400E and VP-2600 model characteristics. ============================================================= Table 1 Main features of last two generations of Fujitsu supercomputers ----------------------------------------------------------------------- System VP-400E VP-2600 Scalar processors 1 2 Scalar cycle time (ns) 14 6.4 Vector processors 1 1 Vector cycle time (ns) 7 3.2 Gates in logic 400/1,300 15,000 Switching time (ps) 350 80 Cache technology/chip density 4 Kb 64 Kb Cache access time (ns) 5.5 1.6 Cache size (KB) 64 2*128 Vector regs. (KB) 128 2*128 Floating point units 3 (Add+M-Add) 4 (2 Mult-Add) Pipelines per F.P. unit 4 4 Max Gflops 1.7 5 Memory interleave 128/256 way 512 way Memory transfer rate (GB/s) 4.5 20 Main memory technology 256 Kb SRAM 1 Mb SRAM Memory access time (ns) 55 35 Max. memory 256 MB 2 GB Second-level memory 256 Kb SRAM 1 Mb DRAM Access time (ns) 100 Max. memory 768 MB 8 GB Transfer rate to main (GB/s) 4.5 10 I/O units 1 1 Total I/O throughput 96 MB/s 1 GB/s Initial shipment date Dec . 87 April 90 Appendix C Hitachi S-810 and S-820 model characteristics. ========================================================= Table 1 Main features of two generations of Hitachi supercomputers ------------------------------------------------------------------ System S-810/20 S-820/80 Scalar processors 1 1 Scalar cycle time (ns) 14 8 Vector processors 1 1 Vector cycle time (ns) 7 4 Gates in logic 550/1,500 2,000/5,000 Switching time (ps) 350/450 200/250 Cache technology/chip density 1 Kb 6,900 Kb+2,500 gates Cache access time (ns) 4.5 4.5 Cache size (KB) 256 256 VR access time (ns) 4.5 2.5 Vector registers (KB) 64 128 Floating point units 3 3 (Add&L+Add/Mult) Pipelines per F.P. unit 2 4 Max Gflop 0.63 3 (2 if unchained ops) Memory interleave 256 transfer rate (GB/s) 16 Main memory technology 16 Kb CMOS 64 Kb BiCMOS Memory access time (ns) 40 20 Max. memory (MB) 256 512 Second-level memory 256 Kb DRAM 1 Mb DRAM Access time (ns) 120 Max. memory (GB) 3 12 Transfer rate to main 1 GB/s 2 GB/s I/O units 1 (32 ch.) 1 (64 ch.) Total I/O throughput (MB/s) 96 288 Shipment date Dec. 83 Jan. 88 Appendix D CRAY supercomputers in Japan ======================================= Table 1 Known CRAY supercomputers installed in Japan (26 installed systems, sorted by installation name. 3 Y-MP2Es on order). Customer name System Date Prefecture Sector ------------- ------ ---- ---------- ------ Aichi Inst. of Techn. X-MP/14se 88 03 Aichi Priv. Univ. Asahi Chemical Y-MP2E/116 91 03 Shizuoka Chemistry Century Research Corp. Cray-1 80 02 Tokyo Service Bureau Century Research Corp. X-MP/18 88 01 Kanagawa Service Bureau Daihatsu-Kogyo Y-MP2/216 90 07 Osaka Automobile Honda R & D Y-MP8/364 90 09 Tochigi Automobile Honda R & D X-MP/14 87 03 Tochigi Automobile Isuzu Motor Y-MP2E/232 91 04 Kanagawa Automobile Mazda X-MP/216 88 12 Hiroshima Automobile Mazda Y-MP2E/232 91 02 Hiroshima Automobile MITI/AIST X-MP/216 88 02 Ibaraki Gov.& Nat.Lab Mitsubishi Elec. Lab Y-MP4/132 89 10 Osaka Conglomerate Mitsubishi H.I. X-MP/116 90 05 Hyogo Heavy Industry Mitsubishi Motor Corp. Y-MP4/116 89 10 Aichi Automobile Mitsubishi Res Inst Y-MP2/116 89 11 Tokyo Research C. Mitsubishi Research Inst. Cray-1 80 07 Tokyo Service Bureau Nippon Telephone & T. X-MP/22 84 08 Tokyo Conglomerate Nippon Telephone & T. Cray-2/4 87 12 Tokyo Conglomerate Nissan X-MP/12 86 05 Kanagawa Automobile Nissan X-MPEA/432 88 10 Kanagawa Automobile Nissan Y-MP8/664 90 08 Kanagawa Automobile Recruit X-MP/216 86 12 Kanagawa Service Bureau Recruit X-MP/18 88 02 Osaka Service Centre Sumitomo Chemical X-MP/116se 89 09 Osaka Chemistry Tohoku University Y-MP8/4128 90 12 Miyagi Nat.University Toshiba X-MP/22 85 02 Kanagawa Conglomerate Toshiba Y-MP8/232 90 03 Kanagawa Conglomerate Toyota X-MP/116 88 08 Aichi Automobile Toyota Y-MP8/232 90 03 Aichi Automobile Appendix E ETA supercomputers in Japan ====================================== Table 1 ETA supercomputers installed in Japan (2 systems, sorted by installation name). Customer name System Date Prefecture Sector ------------- ------ ---- ---------- ------ Meiji University ETA10-P 89 04 Kanagawa Priv. Univ. Tokyo Inst. of Techn. ETA10-E8 88 05 Tokyo Nat.Univ. Appendix F Fujitsu supercomputers in Japan ========================================== Table 1 Known Fujitsu systems installed in Japan (59 out of 63 systems, sorted by installation name). Internal Fujitsu systems not included. Customer name System Date Prefecture Sector ------------- ------ ---- ---------- ------ Advantest VP-50 85 11 Tokyo Conglomerate Air Force VP-50 87 08 Tokyo Gov.& Nat Lab Asahi Kogaku PENTAX VP-30E 88 10 Tokyo Optical Chiyoda Info. Service VP-50 86 04 Tokyo Chemistry ? Chuo University VP-30E 87 10 Tokyo Priv. Univ. Computer Techn. Integ. VP-2400/20 90 08 Service Bureau Daikin Air Conditioner VP-100 87 03 Osaka Mechanical Diesel Kiki VP-30E 89 02 Tokyo Automobile Electric Power Lab. VP-50E 87 09 Tokyo Gov.& Nat Lab Fuji Electric VP-50 85 12 Kanagawa Conglomerate Fuji Electro-Chemical VP-50E 88 11 Tokyo Conglomerate Hazama-gumi VP-30E 88 10 Tokyo Construction ICFD (Fluid Dynamics) VP-200 86 04 Tokyo Research C. ICFD (Fluid Dynamics) VP-400E 89 03 Tokyo Research C. Inst.Nuclear Fusion VP-200 83 12 Ibaraki Gov.& Nat.Lab Inst. Nuclear Fusion VP-200E 88 03 Ibaraki Gov.& Nat.Lab. Inst.Space Aeronautic S. VP-200E 88 04 Tokyo Gov.& Nat.Lab Ishikawajima-Harima VP-50 86 05 Kanagawa Heavy Industry Jaeri (Atomic Energy) VP-2600/10 90 04 Ibaraki Gov.& Nat.Lab Jaeri (Atomic Energy) VP-2600/10 90 04 Ibaraki Gov.& Nat.Lab Kanagawa University VP-30E 87 08 Kanagawa Priv. Univ. Kansai University VP-50E 88 08 Osaka Priv. Univ. Kawasaki Steel VP-50 86 01 Chiba Metal Keio University VP-50E 89 08 Kanagawa Priv.Univ. KHI VP-50 87 06 Kawasaki Mechanical Kobe Steel VP-200 87 06 Hyogo Metal Kodak Japan VP-50E 88 11 Tokyo Chemistry Kyoto University VP-400E 87 08 Kyoto Nat. Univ. Kyoto University VP-2600/10 90 09 Kyoto Nat. Univ. Kyushu University VP-200 87 08 Fukuoka Nat. Univ. Matsushita VP-30E 87 08 Osaka Conglomerate Matsushita VP-100 85 12 Osaka Conglomerate Mitsubishi Kasei VP-50 86 07 Kanagawa Chemistry Nagoya University VP-200E 88 03 Aichi Nat. Univ. NAL (Space Techn.) VP-400E 86 12 Tokyo Gov.& Nat.Lab NAL (Space Techn.) VP-2600/10 90 10 Tokyo Gov.& Nat.Lab Nat. Astro. Observatory VP-200E 89 11 Tokyo Gov.& Nat.Lab Nihon University VP-30E 87 12 Chiba Priv. Univ. Nikko Shoken VP-2200/10 90 12 Financial Nippon Kokan (NKK) VP-50 87 08 Kawasaki Metal Nippon University VP-30E 87 12 Chiba Priv. Univ. Nippon University VP-30E 87 12 Chiba Priv. Univ. NTT VP-50 86 05 Kanagawa Conglomerate Olympus VP-50 86 05 Tokyo Mechanical Osaka Inst. of Techn. VP-30E 88 12 Osaka Priv. Univ. Pacific Consulting VP-30E 89 01 Tokyo Consulting Recruit VP-200 86 06 Tokyo Service Bureau Recruit VP-400 86 06 Tokyo Service Bureau Sharp VP-50 86 04 Osaka Conglomerate Shibaura Inst of Techn. VP-30E 87 10 Tokyo Priv.Univ. Shimizu VP-50 86 06 Tokyo Construction Shionogi VP-30 87 05 Osaka Chemistry SONY VP-2200/10 90 11 Kanagawa Electronics Suukeikaku VP-30E 88 10 Tokyo Math. program. Tokyo Electronics Univ. VP-100E 89 10 Tokyo Priv.Univ. Tokyo University VP-100 86 11 Tokyo Nat. Univ. Toray VP-30 87 08 Tokyo Chemistry Toyota VP-100 85 08 Aichi Automobile Toyota VP-100E 88 04 Aichi Automobile Appendix G Hitachi supercomputers in Japan ========================================== Table 1 Known Hitachi systems installed in Japan (18 systems, sorted by installation name). Internal Hitachi systems not included. Customer name System Date Prefecture Sector ------------- ------ ---- ---------- ------ Bridgestone S-810/5 87 05 Tokyo Chemistry CANON S-820/60 89 10 Kanagawa Conglomerate Dainippon Print S-810/5 88 02 Tokyo Conglomerate Hokkaido University S-820/80 89 02 Hokkaido Nat. Univ. ICFD (Fluid Dynamics) S-820/80 88 10 Tokyo Centre IMS (Molecular Science) S-820/80 88 01 Ibaraki Gov.& Nat.Lab. JIP S-810/5 87 05 Chiba Centre KEK (High Energy Lab) S-820/80 89 03 Ibaraki Gov.& Nat.Lab. Metrology Agency S-810/20 87 11 Tokyo Gov.& Nat.Lab MRI (Meteorology) S-810/10 85 11 Ibaraki Gov.& Nat.Lab NDK Nippon El.Comp. S-810/10 87 02 Centre Nihon University S-820/40 89 06 Chiba Priv. Univ. Nissan Diesel S-810/5 87 04 Saitama Automobile Olubis S-810/5 88 02 Shizuoka Centre Suzuki Motors S-820/60 88 12 Shizuoka Automobile Tokyo University S-820/80 88 01 Tokyo Nat. Univ. Toyo Gum S-810/5 87 10 Tokyo Chemistry Yamaichi Shoken S-820/60 89 04 Tokyo Finance Appendix H NEC supercomputers in Japan ====================================== Table 1 Known NEC systems installed in Japan (18 installed systems, sorted by installation name). Internal NEC systems not included. Customer name System Date Prefecture Sector ------------- ------ ---- ---------- ------ Aoyama University SX-1EA 88 10 Tokyo Priv. Univ. Computer Engineer Ctr. SX-1A 88 12 Service Bureau Daiwa Shoken SX-1A 89 08 Tokyo Financial ICFD (Fluid Dynamics) SX-2 87 05 Tokyo Research C. Japan Dev. Construction SX-JA 90 03 Construction Japan Railway SX-JA 88 11 Tokyo Gov.& Nat.Lab Kumagai SX-1 89 08 Tokyo Construction Mazda SX-2A 89 09 Hiroshima Automobile Obayashi Corp. SX-1EA 88 06 Tokyo Construction Okayama University SX-1E 87 05 Okayama Nat. Univ. Osaka University SX-2 88 01 Osaka Nat. Univ. Port & Harbor Research SX-1E 87 12 Kanagawa Gov.& Nat.Lab Recruit SX-2A 88 10 Tokyo Service Bureau Sumitomo Metal SX-2 88 03 Osaka Metal Industry Tohoku University SX-1 86 03 Miyagi Nat. Univ. Tohoku University SX-2A 88 12 Miyagi Nat. Univ. Tokai University SX-1E 86 09 Kanagawa Priv. Univ. Tokai University SX-1 89 09 Kanagawa Priv. Univ. ---------------------END OF REPORT----------------------------------------