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IOWN APN: 800 Gbps Storage Data Transfer Demo by NTT and NII

PR TIMES Japan
Overview
NTT East, NTT West, NII, RIKEN, and the University of Tokyo demonstrated ultra-high-speed data transfer exceeding 750 Gbps using the IOWN All-Photonics Network (APN). The experiment proved that 800 Gbps line bandwidth can be effectively utilized for long-distance transfers between research hubs in Kobe and Kashiwa.
In Depth

Key Findings

The demonstration achieved a maximum transfer speed of approximately 775 Gbps, representing about 97% of the 800 Gbps line bandwidth. This performance was recorded by simultaneously running two practical applications. The researchers confirmed that speeds exceeding 750 Gbps could be maintained for several minutes, proving the feasibility of ultra-high-speed transfers over long distances.

Technical Details

The experimental setup connected the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS) in Kobe and the University of Tokyo’s Kashiwa campus. The network architecture consisted of:

  • An 800 Gbps APN line connecting NTT West’s Osaka office and NTT East’s Kashiwa office.
  • 400 Gbps x 2 lines connecting these offices to the respective RIKEN and University of Tokyo sites.
  • A comparison with SINET, which showed that APN reduced latency by approximately 20%.

Two applications were used for file transfer: the HPCI shared storage (using a second-generation verification environment) and MMCFTP, a tool developed by NII. For MMCFTP, NII servers equipped with multiple NVMe SSDs were used, connected via one 400GbE and four 100GbE ports.

Background and Context

The project addresses the increasing need to transfer massive datasets between physically separated research hubs for AI, IoT, and big data analysis. Key infrastructure involved includes the SINET6 network operated by NII and the computational resources at RIKEN, such as the “Fugaku” supercomputer and the “ROQUO” GPU supercomputer. The University of Tokyo and RIKEN also operate HPCI shared storage, with approximately 100 petabytes of storage at each the Kashiwa and Kobe sites.

Significance and Outlook

The partners will continue joint research on data synchronization and the expansion of research data utilization environments. A further experiment is planned for November 2026 at the SC26 conference in Chicago. This will involve extending the 400 Gbps segment to the US, marking the first time a file transfer experiment using 400 Gbps or higher across all sections, including international lines, has been attempted between Japan and the US.

Source: https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000001367.000098811.html

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