Entries filed under “Digital Manufacturing”

Now well into its second year of operation, the Hermit system at HLRS in Germany still holds the title as the world’s fastest supercomputer for use in industrial research.

The Cray XE6 system with its 113,664 processing cores has been fully operational and running stably from day one, delivering an average planned system uptime of 99%. With a mean usage capacity rate of 85%, the HLRS HPC system delivers proof that it was designed for sustained performance for real applications. Approximately 60% of scientific users fall into the research realm of engineering. With 30%, physics is the second largest user community relying on Hermit for their research activities.

Hermit is looking forward to about two more years of operation, but it will soon get support from a follow-up system from Cray. The new Cray XC30 – code named Hornet – will increase performance for HLRS users by a factor of between 4 and 5, and will be operational in 2014. Read the Full Story.

HPC Wales has announced a new £300,000 fund, to help fund 20-25 research projects that would benefit from the power of supercomputing technology. Academics and businesses across Wales are being encouraged to apply for a new fund designed to boost collaborative research and innovation projects.

Part-funded by £24 million through the Welsh Government, including support from the European Regional Development Fund, HPC Wales is committed to boosting the Welsh economy by providing academic researchers and businesses with some of the most advanced computing technology in the world.

With access to research funding becoming more and more difficult, we are pleased to be able to offer this support for projects at the leading edge of scientific research,” said David Craddock,Chief Executive of HPC Wales. “We are particularly keen to fund projects that involve collaboration between universities and businesses, and look forward to hearing from researchers looking for a helping hand in taking their projects forward.”

The call also coincides with the final call for HPC Wales Fujitsu funded PhD studentships. Six new studentships are available in the areas of financial and professional services, advanced materials and manufacturing, creative industries, ICT – fourteen have been awarded to date.

The deadline for applications to both funds is May 31, 2013. Read the Full Story.

Over at the IMAGINiT CFD Blog, Ryan Stamm writes that while Computational Fluid Dynamics is not an exact science, it is good engineering.

I’ve been asked to carry out results data to 3 or 4 decimal places! Really? Do results showing 4.015 psi drive product development in a different direction than 4 psi? If so, you don’t need CFD simulation, you need a professor and enough capital to embark on a 6 month research project. Don’t get me wrong, CFD analysis can be exact! However it requires a high degree of scrutiny and more time to capture every minuscule detail. I come across many engineers who feel the need to include every detail is required to derive any value from simulation. This cannot be further from the truth. CFD can be exact but CFD does not have to be exact to drive product development decisions.

Read the Full Story.