Toward Realization of Smart Communities

Essential Processes to Expand Smart Community Business
TAKENAKA Shoji

Creation of Affluent Future with Smart Communities
HIROOKA Koichi / FUSHIYA Nobuhiro
The rapid growth in population and associated increase in energy consumption since the mid-20th century have depleted both the capacity to withstand severe natural phenomena and the natural capital necessary for life on Earth. As a result, Earth's sustainability is becoming degraded and various problems including global warming, shortages of resources and energy, and drought and famine have appeared. With further growth in population anticipated, preventing the depletion of natural capital while meeting the needs of the population is a trade-off that must be resolved in order to create an affluent future. To meet this challenge, it is necessary to develop more efficient social systems including technologies for the production, distribution, and utilization of energy and resources. In addition, it is important to foster a new vision and social values within the community that promote changes in lifestyles.
Toshiba is providing solutions for the realization of smart communities by integrating various solutions accumulated over many years in a wide range of fields, including medical, home, and social infrastructures, and unifying them in the cloud environment.

Next-Generation BEMS Technologies Realizing Comprehensive Energy Management of Groups of Buildings
NODA Hajime / SEKI Yoshiro / IINO Yutaka
Countermeasures against electricity shortages have become a long-term issue in Japan following the Great East Japan Earthquake. Optimization of energy usage by energy conservation, the use of energy-saving equipment, and energy sharing is an urgent issue for office and commercial buildings that consume large amounts of electricity. In addition, it is expected that demand control, peak cuts, demand response, and load control will be achieved by comprehensive energy management among multiple buildings, thus enlarging the capacity for electricity load adjustment.
Toshiba has developed the FACiTENA_TM remote building energy management system (BEMS) service as a technology for comprehensive energy management among multiple buildings and applied it to approximately 100 factories and offices of the Toshiba Group, making use of this service for the implementation of peak cuts. In addition, the Toshiba Group is participating in the BEMS aggregator business, for which grants are being made by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry starting in 2012, and is providing a system aiming at the acquisition of 1,500 small and medium-size buildings as users. The Toshiba Group is also promoting the development and verification of clustered BEMS technology, which performs integrated management of the demand response of a group of buildings in the Yokohama Smart City Project (YSCP).
The Toshiba Group is promoting the development of technologies ranging from a single smart building to comprehensive management of groups of buildings and the rationalization of energy usage in a community, in order to realize smart communities.

Toward Creating Global HEMS Platforms and Business Models
HORIBE Michiko / KISHIMOTO Takuya / YAMADA Shinya
Various functions are required in people's daily lives, characterized by different needs and priorities according to their lifestyles and surrounding environments. In the home energy management system (HEMS) business, including its expansion to overseas markets, it is important to gain an overview of changes in residential circumstances.
Toshiba is promoting the construction of platforms reflecting the strategy of responding to the needs of specific localities and local standards, as well as the development of products and services in collaboration with housing developers, condominium developers, and service providers. The demand for HEMS has been growing in Japan since the Great East Japan Earthquake, and we are promoting commercial projects in this field applying technologies and know-how cultivated in past demonstration projects.
In order to accommodate the recent changes in residential circumstances and resolve the associated problems in Japan, the following must be attained: (1) development of HEMS integrated frameworks for the management and operation of energy through the dissemination of distributed power sources such as photovoltaic systems, fuel cell systems for home use, and battery systems including electric vehicles; (2) collaboration between HEMS and community energy management systems (CEMS) to realize a collaborative energy management system combining HEMS with infrastructure in the community; and (3) further expansion of HEMS through the development of businesses supplying existing and new services utilizing the developed platforms. We are promoting the global HEMS business by dealing with these issues.

High-Quality Power Supply Systems Supporting Development of ICT in Society
OGAWA Kinya
With the spread of information and communication systems, as represented by the Internet, various types of information are now being treated as digital data. Stable operation of these systems has therefore become indispensable for society. In this context, the development of information and communication technology (ICT) in society is supported by high-quality power supply systems. The characteristics of the quality demanded by various customers differ, and each customer has its corresponding requirements for high reliability.
Toshiba proposes high-quality power supply systems to customers in a flexible manner according to their specific requirements. Our technical approach realizes the most reliable planning and proposal for each customer with regard to optimization, renewal, and maintenance of facilities. We are promoting these activities in the fields of power supply systems for buildings, emergency power supply systems, and uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, to secure and improve the reliability of each system.

New Cloud-Based Medical Image Archiving Service as First Component of Healthcare@Cloud_TM Cluster of Healthcare Cloud Services
AIDA Satoshi / TAKAHASHI Yukio / MASE Akira
Toshiba and Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation are developing a cluster of healthcare cloud services called Healthcare@Cloud_TM, reflecting the importance of the healthcare field in smart communities being promoted by the Toshiba Group. As the first component, we have developed and started operation of a cloud-based medical image archiving service that can store important medical diagnostic images safely even in the event of a disaster. This service has excellent features including wide scalability, rapid response, and high operability, while realizing high security and conforming with various related guidelines.

Integrated Management System for Smart Communities
KOBAYASHI Yoshitaka
Although infrastructure facilities such as architectural, mechanical, and electrical systems contribute to the realization of a smart community, the contributions made by control systems and information systems are greater.
Toshiba is developing an integrated management system for smart communities that supports a smart community using information and communication technology (ICT). This system meets the requirements of a smart community including energy saving, resource saving, low cost, convenience and comfort, and fault tolerance. By means of this system, users can optimally control the infrastructure that constitutes the community, allowing a smart community to be easily realized.

Technology for Numerical Simulation of SF₆ Gas Arc Plasma Characteristics Based on High-Order LES Turbulence Model to Develop High-Performance Gas Circuit Breakers
JIMBO Tomohiko / Debasish BISWAS / SHINKAI Takeshi
A gas circuit breaker (GCB) is a safety apparatus that plays a role in the control and protection of an electric power system by interrupting large currents. With the increase in electric power demand, GCBs are required to have large and rapid current interruption capabilities even in the case of unexpected accidents.
To meet these requirements for GCBs, Toshiba has developed a technology for the numerical simulation of sulfur hexafluoride (SF₆) gas arc plasma characteristics based on a high-order large eddy simulation (LES) turbulence model to understand the intricate fluid-plasma interaction phenomena in GCBs. The newly developed simulation technology makes it possible to realize GCBs offering high performance and high reliability.

MAGNIA_TM R3520a/R3510a Two-Way Rack-Mountable Servers for Virtual Server System and Server Integration
TANAKA Kazuyuki / NAGASAWA Kazuya / IKEUCHI Itaru
Toshiba has recently added the new MAGNIA R3520a/R3510a models to its lineup of MAGNIA series Intel^® architecture (IA) servers.
Positioned as higher ranking products compared with the previous models, the R3520a/R3510a are equipped with the latest E5-2600 series Intel^® Xeon^® processor, providing a maximum main memory size of 768 Gbytes. These models are suitable for use as the platform of a virtual server system as well as for system integration. They are also environmentally friendly products, with a maximum operating temperature of 40°C and incorporating a power capping function.

Hybrid Drive with Large Capacity and High-Speed Performance
Mine BUDIMAN / Eric DUNN / Rick EHRLICH
The hybrid drive, which combines the bit cost advantage of rotating media with the high performance of NAND flash memory, has recently been attracting attention as a new storage device. The combination of a hard disk drive (HDD) and NAND flash memory makes it possible to deliver a solid-state drive (SSD)-like user experience with high-speed performance and ample storage capacity through improvement of the cache algorithm.
Toshiba has developed a new cache algorithm that places frequently used data into the NAND flash memory, resulting in a hybrid drive with SSD-like performance. As the newly developed cache algorithm is independent of the operating system, high-performance notebook PCs can be realized by replacing the HDD of existing notebook PCs with a hybrid drive as well as installing hybrid drives in new products.

TIP System for Application to Overseas Nuclear Power Plants
MIYAZAKI Tadashi / MATSUI Takahiro / YASUTA Hidehiko
Toshiba has developed a field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based traversing in-core probe (TIP) instrumentation and control system that offers gamma ray measurement and torque monitoring functions. The newly developed TIP system is also equipped with a TIP interface applicable to various types of plant computers and human-machine interfaces (HMSs).
We have confirmed that the newly developed TIP system conforms with the standards for CE marking, which is required in the European market, and have applied the system to a European boiling water reactor plant.

Shear-Mode Inkjet Printhead Using Lead-Free Piezoelectric Ceramic
SHIMOSATO Masashi / TANUMA Chiaki
It is desirable to decrease the amount of lead in industrial inkjet printheads as a measure to reduce the environmental impacts of harmful lead compounds. However, lead-free piezoelectric materials for inkjet printheads have not been able to replace conventional lead compound materials due to their inferior piezoelectric properties.
Toshiba TEC Corporation has developed a new inkjet printhead using a lead-free alkaline niobate piezoelectric ceramic, and has confirmed that the newly developed inkjet printhead has almost the same inkjet droplet characteristics as the conventional type. We are now working to reduce the operating voltage of the new inkjet printhead and demonstrate its reliability.

Runtime Normally-Off Processor with Nonvolatile Cache Memory Based on High-Speed and Low-Power STT-MRAMs
NOMURA Kumiko / ABE Keiko / FUJITA Shinobu
The total standby power of processor systems has been rapidly increasing with complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) scaling. To reduce this standby power, processor systems use a power gating technique that regulates the power supply to each circuit block. The power supply of each circuit block is cut off when an application is suspended. However, this technique is unable to sufficiently reduce the total standby power consumption.
Toshiba has been engaged in research and development of a new ultra-low-power processor technique using nonvolatile magnetoresistive random access memories (MRAMs), which can reduce the standby power substantially by controlling the power supply even during application execution time. The results of simulations have confirmed that this new processor system can be realized by applying high-speed and ultra-low-power spin-transfer torque (STT)-MRAMs to the cache memory.

EG-5000 Automatic Ticket Gate with Accurate Human Detection and High Safety
MANABE Kazutoshi / SATO Kazuo / SHIDA Tsutomu
With the wide dissemination of non-contact integrated circuit (IC) cards, automatic ticket gates at railway stations are required not only to provide upgraded functions such as automatic charging and faster ticket processing, but also to realize more secure ticket checking and safer gate operation.
Toshiba has developed the EG-5000 automatic ticket gate incorporating a new human detection system, which achieves accurate human detection and excellent safety.