Last week Fujitsu Ltd announced a total of 10 models in a new series of VP supercomputers, the VP2000E series, with performance improvements of between 10 and 38% over the previous VP2000 series machines. A total of 180 supercomputers in the VP2000 series have now been installed, 45 of them outside Japan. The new VP2000E series has a peak vector performance of between 285 MFLOPS and 5.5 GFLOPS. A new entry-level model has been added, the VP2100/1-RE, providing a new performance range for the line, providing a factor of 19 performance range between entry model and top-end model. All models have a maximum memory capacity of 2Gb, and maintain software compatibility with the VPP500 parallel vector supercomputer series, which has a peak vector performance of 6.4 GFLOPS to 355.2 GFLOPS, depending on the model. The new machines will be available from December this year, at a monthly rental of from $107,500, and Fujitsu looks for sales of 50 units over the next three years.
