URI:
       [HN Gopher] Fujitsu launches made-in-Japan next-generation CPU F...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Fujitsu launches made-in-Japan next-generation CPU FUJITSU-MONAKA
        
       Author : my123
       Score  : 290 points
       Date   : 2026-09-15 17:28 UTC (1 days ago)
        
  HTML web link (global.fujitsu)
  TEXT w3m dump (global.fujitsu)
        
       | rwmj wrote:
       | It's Arm based, although they barely mention that.
        
         | thebeardisred wrote:
         | Thanks I was, of course, looking and very curious what their
         | tool chain story will be.
        
         | minimeow wrote:
         | Yes the lack of transparency on ARM architecture and the
         | obfuscation of the RAM capacity with just the slot information
         | is annoying. Not sure if it is deliberate to sell this at a
         | premium to "mainframe" customers or whether its just their
         | marketing folk not being on the ball. Fascinated by the fact
         | Japan has a 2nm process node but I suspect that too is
         | marketing. Perhaps the 2nm portion of the chip is done at TSMC
         | and the rest of the package done in Japan or something like
         | that. It's not like there's a plethora of 2nm Fabs around the
         | planet to choose from.
        
           | imtringued wrote:
           | It looks to me like it is an AI optimized HPC CPU and while
           | HPC CPUs are actually quite fast, they are not particularly
           | well suited for transformer based neural networks.
           | 
           | It's weird that they don't give out any of the interesting
           | numbers like number of memory channels, how much SRAM they
           | have (CPUs tend to have more of it) or what their expected
           | performance is going to be.
        
             | adrian_b wrote:
             | They did a detailed presentation at Hot Chips.
             | 
             | See e.g.:
             | 
             | https://chipsandcheese.com/p/hot-chips-2026-fujitsus-
             | monaka-...
             | 
             | They have provided far more details than companies like
             | Apple or Qualcomm.
        
           | whizzter wrote:
           | Reading of JASM (TSMC/Sony subsidiary) it seems they're
           | planning on producing at least 3nm chips there in their
           | expansion plans.
        
         | nubinetwork wrote:
         | If they didn't mention SVE2, I wouldn't have known either...
         | that would make it arm9 at the earliest...
        
           | a012 wrote:
           | Quick Google result is it's basically a Neoverse V2 system,
           | so yeah, armv9.
           | 
           | Edit: it's funny because this article from 2021 mentioned
           | Fujisu precisely https://siliconangle.com/2021/03/30/arm-
           | unveils-armv9-archit...
        
             | voxelghost wrote:
             | That was regarding the HPC Fugaku , this is next generation
        
             | adrian_b wrote:
             | No it is not at all Neoverse V2, which is obsolete and has
             | much lower performance.
             | 
             | It is a custom Armv9.3-A design (same ISA like the Arm C1
             | CPUs from the flagship smartphones of 2026), but it has
             | double-width execution units for SVE2 (i.e. 256-bit width,
             | vs. 128-bit for the other Arm CPUs) and it has some ISA
             | extensions for AI/ML, e.g. instructions for inference with
             | FP8 (BF16 is already supported by the standard Arm ISA).
             | 
             | Despite the fact that Armv9.3-A may include SME (scalable
             | matrix extension, like in the Apple CPUs and in the Arm C1
             | CPUs), Fujitsu did not mention SME, so I assume that they
             | did not implement it and they rely on their enhanced SVE2
             | (which is not surprising, while the origin of Arm SME is at
             | Apple, the origin of Arm SVE is at Fujitsu).
        
               | my123 wrote:
               | Monaka-X will include SME2 but it didn't make the cut for
               | first-gen Monaka
        
         | titzer wrote:
         | They actually do not in that article. I had to look elsewhere
         | to find that out. Weird, one would expect that a big
         | announcement like this would probably need to be vetted against
         | licensing agreements with Arm that would probably want that
         | fact to be prominently highlighted in press releases.
        
           | izardak wrote:
           | It is in the article - they cite "SVE2" support
        
             | whizzter wrote:
             | Yeah, searched the page for common architectures (x86,arm
             | and Sparc since it was Fujitsu) since it'd seem silly to
             | use a totally novel architecture but didn't find anything
             | until noticing SVE2.
        
         | shrubble wrote:
         | Interesting to note that Fujitsu did this when the SPARC
         | architecture was popular: they enhanced/developed a CPU for the
         | same ABI.
         | 
         | Seems they have decided they don't want to create their own
         | architecture, but take the popular architecture and build on
         | it.
        
           | qmarchi wrote:
           | Thanks kinda how Japan works. Inventing something new is
           | hard, but taking something that's a cool idea and making it
           | actually usable is well within their wheelhouse.
           | 
           | See: - Blue LEDs - Quartz Watches - Lithium-ion Batteries -
           | Bidets
        
             | whizzter wrote:
             | I'm sure there's plenty of other stuff invented in Japan,
             | but that's really beside the point.
             | 
             | The industry is now mature enough that nobody really wants
             | the headache of a new architecture at this point in time,
             | Risc-V got a pass for being a grassroots movement growing
             | out off FPGA's since the IP situation was more or less
             | clear or even predatory with all existing architectures,
             | Power, Sparc,SuperH,68k,etc are buried for good reasons.
        
           | whizzter wrote:
           | Sun invented SPARC, Fujitsu just happened to be the last
           | producer since they built mainframes on it. Reading it seems
           | like they plan to stop producing Sparc processors and
           | machines in a near timeframe so that makes this announcement
           | less surprising.
        
             | adrian_b wrote:
             | For many years the Fujitsu SPARC implementations were much
             | faster than the Sun SPARC implementations.
             | 
             | During the decade 1995-2005, until the 64-bit AMD Opteron
             | servers with Linux offered an alternative that crushed any
             | kind of SPARC CPU with Solaris by a much higher performance
             | combined with a much lower price, the SPARC Sun or Fujitsu
             | servers dominated the market for servers used to host the
             | CAD/EDA design tools used in electronics engineering, for
             | the design of integrated circuits or electronic equipment.
             | This means that all the EDA software from vendors like
             | Mentor, Cadence, Synopsis etc. was available only for
             | Solaris. That kind of software could not be run on Windows,
             | due to the 32-bit memory limit. During that time, whoever
             | got Fujitsu servers instead of the sluggish Sun servers,
             | was very lucky.
        
         | mrweasel wrote:
         | Not mentioning the architecture is rather strange. Being
         | Fujitsu I'd expect SPARC, but apparently not. Maybe we're
         | reaching a point where some circles either don't care or just
         | defaults to ARM?
         | 
         | Obviously they can just ignore the license in the future and
         | continue development out of a local branch, but it's also a bit
         | disingenuous to speak of "sovereign infrastructure" and then
         | use licensed processor design.
        
           | formerly_proven wrote:
           | Fujitsu dropped SPARC for HPC ~seven years ago with their
           | A64fx. That's where ARM SVE comes from in the first place.
        
         | pertymcpert wrote:
         | Yes but it's their own design, not licensing Arm cores.
        
         | Animats wrote:
         | Thanks. Looked for that in the article and couldn't find it.
         | 
         | What are the GPU capabilities?
        
         | gpderetta wrote:
         | Fujitsu has a long history of designing their own micro but
         | using a standard ISA for HPC. Used to be SPARC, now it is ARM.
         | IIRC Fujitsu were the main architects behind the SVE ARM
         | extension.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | But Arm is owned by SoftBank, a Japanese conglomerate.
         | 
         | (I think Japanese sovereignty is the main point of the
         | article.)
        
       | sherujgr wrote:
       | Iam very curious as to how well it'll perform outside of Asia.
        
         | esafak wrote:
         | And if they'll sell it, seeing as they market it as 'sovereign
         | AI'.
        
         | mrweasel wrote:
         | Performance would probably be the same regardless of where you
         | run the CPU.
        
       | alightsoul wrote:
       | Fun fact, Fujitsu used to run their own fabs in Japan until they
       | were sold to UMC and now they're another UMC fab although they
       | are stuck at like the 20nm node. So this is likely made at JASM.
        
         | iicc wrote:
         | I think they'd say if the CPU was fabbed in Japan, instead
         | there's some very "careful" wording:
         | 
         | >next-generation CPU, FUJITSU-MONAKA [1], designed and
         | developed in Japan
         | 
         | >Fujitsu MONAKA Server, powered by the FUJITSU-MONAKA CPU,
         | enhances sovereign capabilities through domestic manufacturing,
        
           | iicc wrote:
           | >FUJITSU-MONAKA utilizes a 3D-stacked architecture with a
           | state-of-the-art 2nm process for the core and a 5nm process
           | for the cache and I/O sections.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Advanced_Semiconductor_M.
           | ..
           | 
           | >The Phase 2 factory was under construction as of January
           | 2025, next to the Phase 1 facility, and is expected to be
           | completed by 2027.[3] Initially planned for manufacturing
           | semiconductors using a 6 nm process, 3 nm was incorporated
           | into production plans for 2028 in 2026
        
           | kennywinker wrote:
           | Right below the headline it says:
           | 
           | > Achieving world-class AI inference performance through
           | Japan-developed 2nm 3D-stacked CPU and server integrated,
           | developed, and manufactured in Japan
           | 
           | Sounds pretty clear to me
        
             | amelius wrote:
             | So, server manufactured/integrated in Japan; actual chip
             | manufactured elsewhere (but "developed" in Japan, whatever
             | that means)?
        
               | ddtaylor wrote:
               | Doesn't really make sense to me. The whole "sovereign"
               | thing is to basically say you won't be screwed if you go
               | to war with a country tomorrow because you are dependent
               | on their supply chain. Nothing about this changes that
               | IMO. They're still getting the chips fabbed somewhere
               | else and run the same risks.
        
               | adrian_b wrote:
               | True, but besides wars there are other dangers, e.g. USA
               | does not declare war when they apply "sanctions"
               | randomly, under the legal theory that they can dictate
               | how anything that includes some piece of US origin may be
               | used by its owner.
               | 
               | Since that theory began to be used, anyone outside US has
               | become anxious to become "sovereign", i.e. to stop using
               | anything about which a foreign state can claim to have
               | rights.
        
               | AtlasBarfed wrote:
               | Isn't the supply chain on advanced semiconductors
               | ludicrously extended?
               | 
               | Wafers rare Earth's, specialized equipment, etc?
        
               | adrian_b wrote:
               | They made a detailed presentation at Hot Chips.
               | 
               | All the component chips are made at TSMC, in various
               | processes.
               | 
               | "Developed in Japan" means the same thing like "developed
               | in USA" means for NVIDIA or AMD or Intel. You can design
               | chips anywhere on the planet, as long as TSMC is willing
               | to provide you the required documentation and EDA
               | libraries (which it does only if you already are or they
               | believe that you will be a big customer).
        
             | wongarsu wrote:
             | depends on whether you read it as
             | 
             | ((2nm 3d stacked CPU) and server) (integrated, developed,
             | and manufactured in Japan)
             | 
             | or
             | 
             | (2nm 3d stacked CPU) and (server integrated, developed, and
             | manufactured in Japan)
        
             | TheRealPomax wrote:
             | Indeed, it is extremely clear: by not saying "manufactured
             | in Japan", the words "developed in Japan" tell you that
             | they drew up the designs for the CPU in Japan, and then
             | sent those designs off to a fab outside Japan for actual
             | manufacturing. Then they bring those CPUs back to Japan, so
             | that the _server_ can be manufactured in Japan even if the
             | _server components_ are not.
             | 
             | That manufacturing step may change in the future, but right
             | now that CPU is not "Made in Japan", it's only "Designed in
             | Japan".
        
               | adrian_b wrote:
               | They did a presentation at Hot Chips, with all these
               | details.
               | 
               | The core die is made with TSMC-N2P, while the SRAM die
               | and the peripheral die are made with TSMC-N5.
               | 
               | Their CPU is designed in Japan, like the AMD CPUs or the
               | Intel CPUs are designed in USA (the latest Panther Lake
               | Intel CPUs have returned for fabrication to USA in 2026,
               | but they also cost double than the corresponding Arrow
               | Lake models made at TSMC in 2025, and their GPUs are
               | still made at TSMC).
        
             | aurareturn wrote:
             | The compute part must have been made in Taiwan because it
             | uses TSMC N2. TSMC N2 is only available in Taiwan right now
             | due to a law restricting the latest node to Taiwan for 1-2
             | years.
        
               | alightsoul wrote:
               | That's Taiwan's silicon shield which the taiwanese see as
               | important. That's why japan has rapidus and the us has
               | Intel
        
         | szatkus wrote:
         | It's 2nm, so it has to be manufactured by TSMC.
        
           | alightsoul wrote:
           | I would assume they want to switch to rapidus asap once it
           | comes online
        
       | Youden wrote:
       | Where are the CPUs fabbed? They make a big deal about "sovereign"
       | but is the CPU actually made in Japan, or do they rely on TSMC?
       | 
       | Also odd how big an emphasis they put on AI inference when they
       | don't build the GPU?
        
         | Max-q wrote:
         | The article says that it's manufactured in Japan.
        
           | ranger_danger wrote:
           | where exactly does it say that? I don't consider "designed
           | and developed in Japan" to be the same as manufactured there
        
             | bradyd wrote:
             | At the very top of the article: "Achieving world-class AI
             | inference performance through Japan-developed 2nm
             | 3D-stacked CPU and server integrated, developed, and
             | manufactured in Japan"
        
               | sgerenser wrote:
               | "Japan-developed CPU..." plus the server itself (parts,
               | power supplies, case, etc.) integrated, developed and
               | manufactured in Japan. It sounds like they're weasel-
               | wording it a bit, but I don't think the CPU itself is
               | manufactured in Japan, only "developed."
        
               | tecleandor wrote:
               | Yep. I'd say the CPU is manufactured outside, and the
               | rest of the server in Japan.
        
               | tremon wrote:
               | Combining info from
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49740907 and
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49740901, it seems
               | that they're relying on TSMC for the first batch and are
               | planning to move production to JASM once that's ready?
        
               | hobofan wrote:
               | Pretty sure it's worded in a way that it applies only to
               | the server, so it should be read as two distinct things:
               | 
               | - Japan-developed 2nm 3D-stacked CPU
               | 
               | - server integrated, developed, and manufactured in Japan
        
               | dopa42365 wrote:
               | Ever seen the phrase "diffused in Taiwan, assembled in
               | Malaysia"?
        
         | nicce wrote:
         | > put on AI inference when they don't build the GPU?
         | 
         | GPU in AI world is essentially a set of specific matrix
         | calculations that this CPU supports on hardware-level. Thought
         | memory speed seems low.
        
         | DashAnimal wrote:
         | According to a Feb press release, they're fabbed by TSMC:
         | 
         | > For FUJITSU-MONAKA, the 2nm semiconductors will tape out next
         | year. Due to this, Rapidus would be unable to meet the
         | deadline, so TSMC is handling the manufacturing.
         | 
         | Source: https://global.fujitsu/en-
         | global/pr/news/2026/02/12-01?utm_s...
         | 
         | According to Rapidus webpage, they are explicitly starting mass
         | production of their 2nm in 2027.
         | 
         | Source: https://www.rapidus.inc/en/iim/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
        
         | adrian_b wrote:
         | Their CPUs are faster at inference than many GPUs. These are
         | server CPUs with 144 cores and wide memory interface.
         | 
         | Fujitsu has added some ISA extensions for AI inference to the
         | standard Arm ISA, e.g. instructions for inference with FP8.
         | 
         | Even their previous CPU generation was for some time the
         | champion in energy efficiency, with better performance per watt
         | than the NVIDIA GPUs, until a newer generation of NVIDIA GPUs
         | has leapfrogged them.
         | 
         | There are good chances that this new Fujitsu CPU might be again
         | for some time the CPU with the best energy efficiency, but it
         | remains to be seen how it compares with the recent GPUs.
        
       | redlewel wrote:
       | Would be cool to get ahold of one of these in the US.
       | 
       | I do find it odd that the 2U model has less storage capacity than
       | the 1U on their chart. That doesn't make much sense to me.
        
       | 10729287 wrote:
       | The two made-in-Japan, premium grade, Fujitsu laptops I had to
       | work with were by far the worse pieces of electronic I have ever
       | used. Both exhibited identical defects: fans running continuously
       | at maximum speed, and the batteries would completely die within
       | hours of the devices being powered off. Windows or Linux. And
       | don't talk about that tiny unresponsive trackpad to me. Never
       | again.
        
         | dijit wrote:
         | The Fujitsu Lifebooks were legendary for their robustness back
         | in the day, I'm genuinely sad you had that experience.
         | 
         | The only fujitsu laptops I used was back in 2011- it was a
         | budget version for on-call and it was _fine_..
         | 
         | Sounds like the fans running 100% probably contributed
         | significantly to the issue here. If I had to guess it was
         | likely that the C-States were disabled in BIOS somehow so the
         | CPU clock was running at full tilt the whole time, maybe
         | combined with a bad thermal paste job.
         | 
         | I'm not here to defend Fujitsu but I've had really bad
         | experiences with basically every major laptop brand (Dell:
         | majorly bad coil whine and especially faulty soldered RAM, HP:
         | keys vanishing from the keyboard and very weak hinges that
         | break all the time, Apple: The GPU unsoldering itself and the
         | butterfly keyboard shenanigans).
         | 
         | I don't really know any brand with a flawless track record
         | sadly.
         | 
         | Before anyone brings up Thinkpads, they're trading on a
         | reputation that hasn't been true for over a decade. If you have
         | fond memories of a thinkpad it's most likely that you had it
         | from before 2016, or it's " _fine_ ", but certainly not great.
        
           | nhubbard wrote:
           | I do recall that Fujitsu had a very... unique approach to
           | exposing the Setup option in their firmware. It was just a
           | UEFI boot entry. If that entry was removed, you couldn't get
           | back into the firmware setup; you had to find the name of the
           | setup EFI file and then run that from the EFI console.
        
         | dwroberts wrote:
         | Their consumer electronics arm is completely unrelated and also
         | majority owned by Lenovo
        
           | criddell wrote:
           | I was about to say if they hadn't said it was a Fujitsu
           | laptop I would have guessed it was a ThinkPad. Describes my
           | experience with a P1 exactly.
        
         | WillAdams wrote:
         | Reaching further back, the Sylistic line was mostly quite
         | good/durable, and I still use my Stylstic ST-4110 when I need
         | to use an old scanner or control a CNC machine on my back deck
         | when cutting tropical hardwoods.
         | 
         | Really miss the transflective display and wish that there were
         | newer devices with such technology
        
         | anonzzzies wrote:
         | What year? The ones I had were the best. Very expensive, but
         | service at the office & at home, very sturdy, very long battery
         | life. That was somewhere early 2000s.
        
         | _trampeltier wrote:
         | I just have Fujitsu Lifebooks at Home since 2007. I think they
         | are good, came with a bloat free Windows. I bought even one for
         | my Mom over 10 years ago. I just changed once the HDD with a
         | SSD. Now all my Lifebook run with Linux just flawless.
        
       | pipes wrote:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
       | 
       | Their software is so poor that it caused probably the biggest
       | miscarriage of justice in history. Well that and Fujitsu staff
       | colluding with post office executives to put innocent people in
       | prison rather than admit there was a problem
        
         | varispeed wrote:
         | I wouldn't trust that this CPU can do maths properly.
        
         | Maken wrote:
         | The 'Fujitsu' that made the shitty software was a British
         | consulting company that was acquired by Fujitsu [1] to farm
         | public contracts. This is made by the Japanese parent company.
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Computers_Limite...
        
           | nisegami wrote:
           | You're right, but the scandal is so upsetting that I
           | personally cannot ever look at Fujitsu the same way even.
           | Also, I think you're neglecting that a large part of why it
           | became so bad was that Fujitsu claimed there was no issue
           | with their software. Even if it were built by a company they
           | acquired, the response to the developing situation was
           | something that the parent company should have stepped in to
           | oversee.
        
           | varispeed wrote:
           | It is ultimately Fujitsu responsibility.
        
       | varispeed wrote:
       | Never buy products of this dodgy company.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
        
       | kittikitti wrote:
       | I think what's most notable about this for me is the reduced
       | environmental impact. The specifications list liquid-cooling as
       | optional and it highlights the CPU as the main processor instead
       | of a power hungry GPU. My takeaway is that the next generation of
       | AI HPC's will focus more heavily on sustainable operations.
        
       | drob518 wrote:
       | One problem we're going to have with AI hardware is coming up
       | with a standard set of specifications that are comparable. I
       | don't really care about the CPU GHz and the memory bandwidth, at
       | least not directly. What I really want to know is how many tokens
       | per second this will deliver, but that also depends on the model.
       | We need a standard metric for that. Perhaps we agree on a
       | specific open weight model (e.g. GLM 5.3 Flash or Qwen vWhatever)
       | and then measure TPS on the hardware of interest.
        
         | swiftcoder wrote:
         | > I don't really care about the CPU GHz and the memory
         | bandwidth ... What I really want to know is how many tokens per
         | second this will deliver
         | 
         | There is a fairly direct link between the two numbers. You can
         | predict the latter from former reasonably well
        
         | michaelbuckbee wrote:
         | I feel like even TPS is becoming less of a good metric as we're
         | seeing certain models handle similar problems while burning far
         | fewer tokens.
        
         | julius wrote:
         | I always heard of GB/s as most important number ... AI told me
         | their 8800 MT/s on 8 Byte, 12 DDR5-Channels means 845 GB/s. A
         | Nvidia RTX 4090 has 1008 GB/s. Nvidia B200 has 8000 GB/s. Is
         | this the right way of looking at it?
        
           | hermitShell wrote:
           | You have to load the model weights into VRAM over PCI-E (from
           | RAM). So the (PCI-E) bandwidth strongly affects time to first
           | token.
           | 
           | You have to run inference on the GPU by reading and writing
           | to VRAM. So TFLOPS of the compute matters, and bandwidth to
           | the VRAM (Always integrated with the GPU, rarely a
           | bottleneck), and this strongly affects tokens/s
           | 
           | If you're doing training workloads or offloading to system
           | RAM, it gets more complicated. (And mostly bound up trying to
           | feed compute on time)
           | 
           | (Edits for clarity.)
        
             | usrnm wrote:
             | > So the (PCI-E) bandwidth strongly affects time to first
             | token
             | 
             | On dedicated inference hardware I'd expect model weights to
             | never leave the RAM, and you'd probably load them on
             | startup before even starting to serve requests
        
       | lucaslazarus wrote:
       | Wow a corporate TLD in a wild, never seen this outside of the
       | erstwhile domains.google
        
         | r_lee wrote:
         | there's quite a few
         | 
         | like:
         | 
         | - home.kpmg - global.honda
         | 
         | and probably more I forgot about
         | 
         | but as you can see, they're pretty terrible for replacing .com
         | domains
        
         | varispeed wrote:
         | Funny they have money to buy TLD or even develop such a fancy
         | CPU, but don't have money to compensate people affected by Post
         | Office scandal.
        
       | hermitShell wrote:
       | I fail to see how they will take a significant market share or
       | even break even on this venture.
       | 
       | It's an overcrowded market. Far better would be to focus on
       | semiconductor supply chain, which Japan already supplies some
       | elements, to sell to fabs.
       | 
       | Because the bottleneck is the fabs. If a new 2 nm fab came online
       | today, it would immediately sell all its capacity to 2030 no
       | problem, without Fujitsu trying this gambit.
       | 
       | It's not 'sovereign', the architecture is not designed in Japan,
       | the silicon is not fabbed in Japan. This whole thing is sideways.
        
         | Daishiman wrote:
         | > I fail to see how they will take a significant market share
         | or even break even on this venture.
         | 
         | Doesn't matter. You have to start somewhere and this is a good
         | start.
        
         | formerly_proven wrote:
         | Japan historically behaves as if they have nukes and need a
         | totally sovereign HPC capability to support their stockpile.
        
         | pertymcpert wrote:
         | It's a custom Fujitsu micro-architecture.
        
         | broken-kebab wrote:
         | >the architecture is not designed in Japan
         | 
         | The text says "next-generation CPU, FUJITSU-MONAKA, designed
         | and developed in Japan".
        
           | hermitShell wrote:
           | It's ARM.
        
       | vondur wrote:
       | Every developed country is going to push for their own homemade
       | chips. Japan used to make Sparc CPU's back in the day. Probably
       | many others I'm not aware of.
        
         | nullbio wrote:
         | Every developed country except Australia, perhaps. This
         | government is atrocious. The record for highest number of
         | bureaucrats per capita in the world is owned by Australia. All
         | they know how to do is tax people. All the wealthy people have
         | left, or are leaving.
        
       | zackmorris wrote:
       | I've been calling for high-multicore CPUs (at least 100 cores)
       | with local memories for a quarter century now. No winners so far.
       | 
       | A Pentium 4 hit 3.8 GHz longer than that ago in 2004, so that's
       | not special. And the estimated price will be $7,000-10,000, which
       | isn't special either since that's about 10x more than it should
       | be.
       | 
       | Hot take: GPUs disrupted the CPU industry to such a degree that
       | CPUs never recovered, and like the k-shaped economy, the current
       | status quo only serves a small fraction of customers. We can and
       | should do better, but sadly we won't. Still, it's good that
       | Fujitsu did this, for the competition if nothing else.
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | Unless they are used for multi-processing in classical UNIX
         | fashion, or proper microkernels, most applications will hardly
         | take advantage of them.
         | 
         | Managed languages runtimes are probably the ones that would be
         | better equipped to take advantage of them, for distributed JIT,
         | GC and asynchronous code.
         | 
         | The Connection Machine style with StarLisp.
         | 
         | Very few devs can write optimal multi-threaded code that
         | explores the single digit count of cores on their laptops or
         | phones already.
        
       | a11r wrote:
       | Back in 2008 Fujitsu has one of the best performing 10Gbps
       | Switches. We were building 40 Gbps packet sniffers at Google (4x
       | 10 Gbps NICs) and needed switches that could do things like
       | mirror traffic across ports at line rate. Fujitsu was way ahead
       | of the pack. I always wondered what held them back from building
       | a meaningful networking business in the US.
        
         | throwup238 wrote:
         | _> I always wondered what held them back from building a
         | meaningful networking business in the US._
         | 
         | It was just timing. Their networking gear was built on some
         | very impressive ASICs which became commodity chips a few years
         | later before they could grow. Arista, Juniper, et al ate their
         | lunch using other vendors' IP. IIRC it was Broadcom and Fulcrum
         | that released the chips that killed them.
        
           | Den_VR wrote:
           | Another broadcom related tragedy
        
         | alightsoul wrote:
         | Having a us based vendor. Fujitsu is huge in Asia for ISPs and
         | so is Mitsubishi and Sumitomo (yes they made or used to make
         | network equipment too)
        
       | geye1234 wrote:
       | Will it lock up thousands of innocent self-employed post office
       | contractors as part of its instruction set?
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
        
         | tristor wrote:
         | Probably not, Japanese firms excel at hardware and generally
         | build extremely poor software. This a hardware product, so
         | consequently it is probably fairly good.
        
           | seki285 wrote:
           | What caused this?
        
             | tristor wrote:
             | Honestly, no idea. In my career I have worked with a lot of
             | Japanese firms and have always found their engineers to be
             | excellent. I used to think it was a lack of consideration
             | for UX, but that obviously can't be true when you see
             | excellent examples of UX in hardware (e.g. Switch
             | controls), even though its exceedingly rare on the software
             | side.
             | 
             | If anyone on HN knows (there are several other commenters
             | more deeply steeped in Japanese engineering culture), I
             | would love to know why as well.
        
               | logicchains wrote:
               | Japanese culture and work culture is very
               | hierarchical/top down. They excel at waterfall but it's
               | basically impossible to do agile in a Japanese office
               | environment, and waterfall is suitable for hardware but
               | terrible for building software.
        
             | t43562 wrote:
             | I think Ruby would be a counterpoint - although it's the
             | only one I know of.
             | 
             | I worked for a Japanese company although in a local office
             | with local management. Through all those layers of
             | protection I got the impression that they suffer from what
             | all corporates suffer from - no software engineers that
             | have made it to the top. Software companies run by people
             | who have no clue.
             | 
             | In the US, for example, I think some people who have a clue
             | or a partial clue have made it up the ladder in some places
             | and therefore although everyone there has their horror
             | stories of idiotic behavior it is probably somewhat better.
        
             | applfanboysbgon wrote:
             | This is just my hypothesis, but I believe the language
             | barrier is an issue. English is effectively a necessity for
             | programming because real programming languages with
             | ecoystems, error diagnostics, documentation, and useful
             | articles/blogs are written in English. Japanese software
             | developers know enough to get by, but they're still by-and-
             | large insulated from the Anglosphere learning culture,
             | where ideas and best practices rapidly propagate in the
             | open. I'm not involved in hardware, but I'm guessing this
             | is less of a barrier for hardware because
             | hardware/documentation tends to be proprietary rather than
             | open anyways, so whereas the Anglosphere gains a cumulative
             | learning advantage from an open source + technical blogging
             | culture in their fluent language, this does not manifest so
             | much in hardware.
        
         | exmadscientist wrote:
         | Conglomerates in general, and especially Japanese ones, are
         | heterogeneous enough that those are basically two different
         | companies. The British "Fujitsu" was an acquisition that I'm
         | certain they now deeply, deeply regret.
         | 
         | (Which in no way excuses their utter evil.)
        
       | sandreas wrote:
       | I'm kind of a Fujitsu fanboy. Since i came across the fact that a
       | pretty modern xeon ecc ram nvme Workstation boards can be
       | optimized to only draw ~10 Watt idle is just impressive, that is
       | less than a gaming router. Even older ones like D3417-B12 were
       | crazy effizient.
       | 
       | I also liked their Primergy Servers, but never got one for a
       | reasonable price to test it out.
       | 
       | Another thing was the Futro series (e.g. S930) that could be used
       | as opnsense firewall or low budget proxmox host.
       | 
       | Unfortunately it was always hard to obtain the high quality stuff
       | as a consumer and years ago they sold their mainboard section to
       | kontron. So no new Fujitsu Mainboards for now... What a pity.
        
       | irusensei wrote:
       | If anyone is curious and want to skip all the PR talk:
       | 
       | >Combined with SVE2 vector operations and software optimization,
       | 
       | It's ARMv9.
        
         | Perz1val wrote:
         | I wonder how many cores they plan to cram in there, at least
         | like 256 right?
        
           | flumes_whims_ wrote:
           | 144 per the article
        
       | yencabulator wrote:
       | Here's the previous generation, two years ago:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42415754
       | 
       | And here's more technical information about this generation:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49443040
        
       | qsbuilder wrote:
       | If they can't build real enterprise sales and software support
       | outside Japan, it's just another cool Arm chip no one can
       | actually buy
        
       | jaen wrote:
       | More detailed presentations about the Monaka CPU:
       | 
       | wccftech summary: https://wccftech.com/fujitsus-monaka-
       | chip-3d-stacks-2nm-cpu-...
       | 
       | 2026: https://global.fujitsu/-/media/Project/Fujitsu/Fujitsu-
       | HQ/te...
       | 
       | 2023: https://global.fujitsu/-/media/Project/Fujitsu/Fujitsu-
       | HQ/te...
       | 
       | FugakuNEXT, the supercomputer it will be used in, also some
       | details about the next-gen Monaka-X:
       | https://global.fujitsu/-/media/Project/Fujitsu/Fujitsu-HQ/te...
       | 
       | For a single CPU: 844 GB/s memory bandwidth (12 channels of DDR5
       | RDIMM, 8800MT/s). 4.3-6 TFLOPS.
       | 
       | Basically comparable to a modern GPU, so good for HPC & AI
       | workloads. (though only 2 CPUs per node, with GPUs 4-8 is more
       | common)
        
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