Fujitsu ready to sell its custom ‘Monaka’ Arm chip, maybe to rival server-makers
Clouds, the sovereign-sensitive, and the inferencing-interested are also about to get sales calls
Fujitsu is set to begin selling its custom 'Monaka' Arm chip, potentially to competitors in the server market, starting in November. The Japanese tech giant unveiled plans for the chip back in 2023, describing it as a derivative of the silicon used in the Fugaku supercomputer, tailored for datacenter applications. Fugaku, once the world's most powerful supercomputer, currently holds the ninth spot on the Top 500 list.
Monaka, however, diverges significantly from Fugaku's silicon, employing Broadcom's 3D-chip stacking technology and the Armv9 instruction set architecture (ISA). The chip features four 2nm compute dies, each housing 36 cores, along with four 5nm SRAM chiplets and a central I/O and memory die supporting 12 channels of DDR5 and PCIe 6.0 connectivity.
Fujitsu has been promising Monaka's release since 2027, but it will now become available from November. The company intends to sell the chip to cloud operators and server manufacturers, who will face competition from Fujitsu's own three server models: a 1U server, a 2U server, and a 2U, dual-CPU model for multi-node deployments.
Each server model boasts a 144-core processor and utilizes Fujitsu's 144-core processor. At this stage, Fujitsu has not disclosed pricing for the Monaka chip or servers. The company emphasizes its potential as a strong option for inferencing workloads, boasting twice the inferencing output of rival CPUs, which could attract interest from AI giants, hyperscalers, and neoclouds.
Additionally, the ability to operate in high-temperature, air-cooled datacenters may appeal to datacenter operators seeking to optimize cooling costs.
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