学際大規模情報基盤共同利用・共同研究拠点



Pamphlet

The Joint Usage/Research Center for Interdisciplinary Large-scale Information Infrastructures is made up of eight centers equipped with supercomputers. These centers are the Information Initiative Center of Hokkaido University, the Cyberscience Center of Tohoku University, the Information Technology Center of the University of Tokyo, the Center for Information Infrastructure of the Institute of Science Tokyo, the Information Technology Center of Nagoya University, the Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies of Kyoto University, the D3 Center of Osaka University, and the Research Institute for Information Technology of Kyushu University. This is a network-type joint usage and collaborative research center, and its core institution is the Information Technology Center of the University of Tokyo. The Center began as a program of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science & Technology (MEXT) in April 2010.

The formal title of this program is "Joint Usage/Research Center for Interdisciplinary Large-scale Information Infrastructures," but it is also known as "Japan High Performance Computing and Networking plus Large-scale Data Analyzing and Information Systems (JHPCN)". This alternative name indicates that research here is carried out in four areas:
very large-scale numerical computation, very large-scale data processing, very large capacity network technology, and very large-scale information systems.

 

 
The objective of the program is to promote the continuous progress of academic research and to lay the groundwork for interdisciplinary collaborative research in Japan. The program strives to tackle highly challenging problems, previously thought extremely difficult to solve, by using information infrastructures such as very large-scale numerical computation, very large-scale data processing, and very large capacity network technology. The program deals with a variety of topics including earth environment problems, energy problems, material resources, genomic information, web data analyses, time-series data of sensor network, and information technology-related problems. In FY 2010, 37 research topics were adopted, 39 topics in FY 2011, 35 topics in FY 2012, and 44 topics were adopted in FY 2013.
From 2013 onwards, the JHPCN’s centers, as part of the High Performance Computer Infrastructure (HPCI), are responsible for the operation of those joint research resources named the HPCI-JHPCN system. Through collaboration with the wider research community, including K-computer research, the program will promote interdisciplinary joint research.