Fujitsu Will Pursue AI with Custom-Built Processor

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Fujitsu Will Pursue AI with Custom-Built Processor
Although the DLU has been in the works since at least 2015, Fujitsu hasn’t talked much about its design. However, last month at ISC 2017, Takumi Maruyama delivered an update on Fujitsu’s HPC and AI efforts, and offered a fairly deep dive into the inner workings of its upcoming deep learning chip. Maruyama, who is the senior director of Fujitsu’s AI Platform Division, has been involved in SPARC processor development since 1993 and is currently working on the DLU project.

According to Maruyama, like many of the other processors built for deep learning, the DLU relies heavily on lower precision math to optimize both performance and energy efficiency for processing neural networks. Specifically, the chip natively supports FP32, FP16, INT16, and INT8 data types. Fujitsu has demonstrated that lower precision (16-bit and 8-bit) integer formats can be used to good effect on at least some deep learning applications, without a serious loss of accuracy. The idea would be to develop software that could generalize that capability across a wide array of deep learning applications.

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The DLU package will contain some amount of second-generation high bandwidth memory (HBM2), which will feed data to the processor at high speeds. The package will also include an interface for connecting to other DLUs via the Tofu interconnect (or something similar). Using this off-chip network, Fujitsu envisions very large systems being built, the idea being to create a scalable platform for even the largest and most complex deep learning problems.

The first DLU is scheduled to be available sometime in FY2018, and will be offered as a coprocessor, with a host CPU to drive it. Starting with the next generation of the technology, Fujitsu plans to embed the DPU in a host CPU of some sort. No timeline was offered for this second-generation product.

The company’s ultimate plan is to establish a DLU line in parallel with its array of general-purpose SPARC processors. Like all chipmakers, Fujitsu realizes that AI/machine learning is going to dominate the application space in the not-too-distant future, and those companies that fail to adapt to that reality will be marginalized.
https://www.top500.org/news/fujitsu-will-pursue-ai-with-custom-built-processor/
 
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