Toshiba develops scale-out technology to take FinTech to a new level

By Leandra Monteiro

Toshiba Corporation announced a scale-out technology that minimises hardware limitations, an evolution of its optimization computer, the Simulation Bifurcation Machine (SBM), that supports continued increases in computing speed and scale. Toshiba expects the new SBM to be a game changer for the financial transactions market. Problems that require large-scale, high-speed and low-latency, such as simultaneous financial transactions involving large numbers of stock, and complex control of multiple robots will find this technology more than useful.

Speed and scale are crucial in industrial sectors as different as finance and logistics which deal with large numbers and make complex decisions in the shortest time possible. Aiming to bring higher efficiencies to these businesses, Toshiba has addressed combinatorial optimization problems by developing high-speed, high-accuracy algorithms and corresponding practical computer solutions. The company recently announced a second generation of its simulated bifurcation algorithms, implemented on classical computers via a single field programmable gate array (FPGA), that surpasses quantum computers in obtaining optimal solutions for various combinatorial optimization problems at high speed.

Toshiba continues to pursue better performance of the SBM by installing more FPGAs in the computer, an approach called scale-out in computer architecture. At the heart of the technology is a partitioned version of the simulated bifurcation algorithm that enables multiple FPGAs to exchange information on variables with each other, and that triggers an autonomous synchronization mechanism in minimizing the communications overhead to an extent that does not affect overall performance.

Commenting on the application of the technology, Kosuke Tatsumura, Chief Research Scientist at Toshiba Corporation’s Corporate Research & Development Center said, “Fast computing speed, large computing scale, and low latency to provide solutions are the critical values the new SBM can offer to business. For example, we expect the financial industry can benefit if they can trade more stocks simultaneously, and robots in the logistic industry will perform better with zero-time-lag computation. We hope the new technology will take fintech and logistic to a new level.”