The second generation Fujitsu Digital Annealer is now enabling organisations to make a rapid and affordable leap to solve complex combinatorial optimisation problems – enabling breakthroughs in areas such as optimising manufacturing processes, minimising traffic congestion and enabling financial services providers to align investment portfolios against ever-changing risk landscapes. Powered by pioneering quantum -inspired technology¹, the Fujitsu Digital Annealer delivers unprecedented disruptive new solutions including prioritising rollout locations for next-generation mobile networks to maximise customer uptake, drug discovery, and molecular simulations.

Dr. Joseph Reger, Fujitsu Fellow and Chief Technology Officer CE & EMEIA at Fujitsu, comments: “Our ultimate aim is to help customers and society as a whole to solve ever-larger and more complex challenges. As Moore’s Law seems to slow down, there’s a compute deficit which is threatening to slow down the pace of progress. Fujitsu is addressing that with the Digital Annealer, which enables an entirely different approach to finding solutions, inspired by quantum computing’s simultaneous processing capabilities. The key difference to traditional computing is that the Digital Annealer can tackle complex combinatorial problems by comparing thousands of possible results at the same time, rather than in sequence.”

The Digital Annealer’s unparalleled compute power can be deployed as a cloud-hosted or on-premises service solution², depending on customer preference. It integrates seamlessly into standard data center operating environments, without the need for complex infrastructure required by regular quantum computers³, which are energy-intensive and need expensive cooling systems running at near absolute-zero temperature.

Digital Annealer rapidly solves complex combinatorial problems

Unique simultaneous data processing capabilities allow the Fujitsu Digital Annealer to instantly find the optimal combination of massively complex, previously unmanageable data variables. For example, choosing the most valuable combination of 40 from 100 items to be put in a backpack for a trek could result in a number of possibilities exceeding one million times the number of stars in the universe⁴. With the Digital Annealer, the problem can be solved in less than one second.

However, even this representation of a complex combinatorial problem does not meet the complexity of the types of business challenges the Digital Annealer is designed to handle, which go way beyond what conventional computing can do. One example of a business application is for a bank to optimise a delivery round of money to ATM cashpoint machines, prioritised by amount. The Fujitsu Digital Annealer can instantly work out which ATMs a particular driver should visit, calculate the optimal route to take, while simultaneously suggesting how much to deposit in each machine.

Digital Annealer finds near-instant answers to business challenges

The Fujitsu Digital Annealer is already delivering huge benefits to customers in multiple industries. In financial services, NatWest bank is leveraging the technology to optimise its mix of liquid assets. The Digital Annealer has enabled the bank to complete highly-complex calculations significantly faster than traditional systems with an even higher degree of accuracy⁵. As a result, NatWest has been able to identify new, profitable investment opportunities while achieving full regulatory risk compliance and at the same time helps to reduce the risk of human error.

In the automotive industry, Fujitsu is working with several leading global manufacturers to trial the Digital Annealer in use cases that include streamlining of shop floor job scheduling, enhancing smart mobility services and refining car design to reduce noise while driving. Furthermore, for a recent reorganisation of Fujitsu’s own warehousing, the Digital Annealer recommended optimised routing and stock placement. This reduced the distance travelled to collect items by 45 percent, resulting in significant time and cost savings.

According to Fujitsu CTO Dr. Reger: “With the availability of the second generation Digital Annealer, we are enabling customers to answer increasingly complex ‘what if?’ questions, by adding more variables and working at greater precision – to tackle problems that traditional computers simply cannot solve because of the exponential increase in the number of possible combinations. And unlike true quantum computing, which is still far from being commercially viable, since it is prohibitively expensive and requires cryogenic cooling, the benefits of the Digital Annealer are already available to organisations across all sectors today – whenever and however they want to disrupt, revolutionise, streamline, or simply optimise businesses processes.”

Proof of concept services enable customers to get started immediately

Fujitsu’s co-creation services enable customers to immediately put the Digital Annealer to work, providing expertise and support in identifying and addressing challenges where a solution was previously never thought possible or practical. Fujitsu also supports in integrating the Digital Annealer into production environments.

Pricing and availability

The Digital Annealer is available as-a-service on a subscription basis, including technical and consulting services, support and optional additional consultancy for solution development. It can be deployed as a cloud hosted or on-premises service. The second generation of Fujitsu’s Digital Annealer is available to customers for proof of concepts, with general availability scheduled for April 2019.