High Performance Computing (HPC) technologies have been adopted in most of the main research universities and National labs over the past 30 years. These systems, which push the envelope of computing systems, storage, networking and software development, have been used to solve the most massive and grand challenge problems today. However, the use of these technologies (although on a smaller scale) is critical for industrial companies to adopt, in order to compete in the global marketplace. Dell is leading this effort, together with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) to bring HPC technologies to smaller manufacturing companies. This Customer Profile describes how NCSA and Dell are working with organizations to help them become more productive.
NCSA has a private sector program (PSP) which works with the smaller companies to help them adopt HPC technologies based on the expertise acquired over the past quarter century. By working with these organizations, NCSA can help them to determine the Return on Investment (ROI) of using more computing power to solve real world problems than is possible on smaller, less capable systems. While a clustered supercomputer may have downtime due to using the latest state-of-the-art technologies, a commercial enterprise trying to turn a profit cannot accept the downtime traditionally associated with a Top500 implementation. The NCSA created an HPC cluster, iForge to address the needs and requirements of manufacturing companies. Rather than a static cluster, iForge was designed in order to be upgraded as new technologies (primarily new CPUs) were made available. The iForge system can be fully upgraded periodically and contains nodes which have been designed with larger memories than traditional compute nodes for applications that require the larger memory for optimal performance.
Manufacturing organizations may use a combination of finite element analysis can computational fluid dynamics. Both of these types of simulations can take advantage of the iForge cluster in order to perform more accurate simulations or to run larger models, compared to inhouse workstations. NCSA and Dell are working with various companies to help them become more competitive through the use of HPC technologies. Download this solution brief now to learn more about the NCSA, Dell and the PSP programs that are available.
