Fujitsu, from Japan's first computer to the world's fastest supercomputer
Fujitsu built Japan's first computer in 1954, and 66 years later a machine it developed with a national research institute was named the most powerful supercomputer on Earth. Along the way the company has owned a British computer maker, founded a top football club and made the world's first 21-inch full-colour plasma screen.
Founded on 20 June 1935 as Fuji Telecommunications Equipment Manufacturing, the company was a spin-off of Fuji Electric, itself a 1923 joint venture between Furukawa Electric and Germany's Siemens. That makes it one of the oldest IT firms still operating, younger than IBM but older than Hewlett-Packard. It came through the postwar Allied occupation largely unharmed and shortened its name to Fujitsu in 1967.
The FACOM 100 of 1954 was followed by transistorised mainframes in 1961, and in 1990 Fujitsu launched what were then the world's fastest mainframes. That same year it paid $1.29 billion for 80% of the British firm ICL, which eventually adopted the Fujitsu name in 2002. It formed the flash memory venture Spansion with AMD in 1993, bought the rest of Amdahl in 1997 and, reviving its Siemens roots, merged European computer operations with that company in 1999 into what became the world's fifth-largest computer manufacturer. Home users in Japan knew its FM Towns multimedia PC, built from 1989 until 1997.
Not every move lasted. Fujitsu sold its hard drive business to Toshiba in 2009, cut 5,000 jobs in 2013 when facing a net loss of 95 billion yen, and spun off its chip manufacturing after heavy losses. It has also been a sports patron, founding Kawasaki Frontale in 1955 and running the Fujitsu Frontiers American football team since 1985.
In June 2020 Fugaku, developed with the RIKEN research institute and housed in Kobe, topped the global supercomputer rankings at 415.53 petaflops, three times faster than the previous leader. Fujitsu now employs about 124,000 people, serves customers in over 50 countries and regions, and in 2024 moved its headquarters from Tokyo to Kawasaki.
Source: Fujitsu
