NEC will create a supercomputer based on Intel Xeon 6900P and AMD Instinct MI300A in Japan for nuclear fusion research

NEC Corporation will create a new LDC complex, which is planned to be put into operation in Japan in July 2025. The system, based on AMD and Intel components, will be used for various research and development in the field of nuclear fusion.

The order for the creation of the supercomputer came from the National Institutes of Quantum Science and Technology of Japan (QST) under the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID), as well as from the National Institute of Fusion Sciences (NIFS) as part of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS). The system will be installed at the Rokkasho Institute of Fusion Energy (part of QST) in Aomori (Japan).

The basis of the designed supercomputer will be 360 ​​NEC LX 204Bin-3 nodes, each of which will include two Intel Xeon 6900P processors of the Granite Rapids generation (720 chips in total) and DDR5 MRDIMM memory. In addition, 70 NEC LX 401Bax-3GA nodes will be used, carrying four AMD Instinct MI300A accelerators on board (for a total of 280 products). We are talking about the use of InfiniBand interconnect with 400G NVIDIA QM9700 switches, as well as DDN EXAScaler ES400NVX2 storage with a capacity of 42.2 PB with the Luster file system. Altair PBS Professional software will be used to manage workloads.

Image source: NEC

The performance of the supercomputer is expected to reach 40.4 Pflops. This is 2.7 times more than the total indicators of the two current LDC systems installed as part of the independent projects QST and NIFS. Scientists intend to use the new NRS complex to accurately predict experiments and create operating scenarios for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). In addition, the power of the supercomputer will be in demand by research groups of the Satellite Tokamak JT-60SA tokamak and the DEMO power plant (DEMOnstration Power Plant), which uses thermonuclear fusion.