Pezy Computing

About Pezy Computing

Pezy Computing is a Japanese fabless semiconductor company established in January 2010, specializing in the design and sale of many-core microprocessors for the high-performance computing (HPC) market. The company was founded by Motoaki Saito, a medical doctor and Ph.D. who transitioned into a serial entrepreneur in the medical and computing fields. His background in biological physics and radiology informed his vision for leveraging supercomputing to solve complex problems.

The firm operates on a fabless business model, focusing on the design and development of its proprietary processors while outsourcing manufacturing to third-party foundries like TSMC. Its revenue is primarily generated from the sale of these microprocessors, accelerator modules, and complete supercomputing systems, such as the ZettaScaler series, which often incorporate their specialized liquid immersion cooling technology. Clients typically include research institutions and corporations engaged in large-scale scientific calculations.

Pezy Computing's product portfolio is centered around its PEZY-SC series of processors. The PEZY-SC2, a 2,048-core processor, was a key component in the Gyoukou supercomputer, which achieved a top-five ranking on the TOP500 list in November 2017. A subsequent generation, the PEZY-SC3, features 4,096 cores manufactured on a 7nm process. A key characteristic of Pezy's processors is their MIMD (Multiple Instruction, Multiple Data) many-core architecture, which allows for a high degree of thread-level parallelism. This design, combined with fine-grained multithreading and a non-coherent cache system, aims to deliver high energy efficiency, a crucial metric in the supercomputing industry. Systems equipped with Pezy processors have consistently ranked high on the Green500 list, which measures the energy efficiency of supercomputers.

The company's history includes significant technical achievements as well as notable challenges. After its founding, Pezy launched its first many-core processor, the PEZY-1, in 2012. By 2015, systems using its processors held the top three spots on the Green500 list. However, in December 2017, founder Motoaki Saito was arrested on charges of fraudulently obtaining research subsidies from Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO). Despite this, the company has continued its operations, entering into a partnership with proteanTecs in 2022 and merging with XTus Inc. in April 2023 to continue its development efforts.