Background introduction:
Customer Background
The automaker is one of the oldest automakers in Germany, which has an annual output of 450,000 vehicles. High technical expertise, quality standards, and innovation capabilities have made it one of the most successful and prominent car brands in the world and a top 500 brand.
Project Background
The HPC infrastructure services department of this automobile manufacturer is rebuilding and expanding its high-performance computing cluster to support running computer aided engineering (CAE) applications such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and crash simulations for automobile manufacturing. They desired high-performance, high-density, and low-power IT infrastructure clusters based on the latest stable hardware technology platforms to provide technical support for business development for the next 3–4 years.
Challenges:
1. Processing More Engineering Data
With the development of the automobile manufacturing industry, a large amount of data is generated during the design and production of automobiles. The timely and effective processing of data can provide powerful guidance for subsequent production.
2. Larger Scale with Smaller Details
To improve the accuracy of collision simulation analysis, use of more precise mesh division and the simulation of more fine structures are required, which is computationally intensive.
3. Complicated and Difficult Analysis
In the CFD analysis of automobile manufacturing, more influencing factors need to be considered, not only to deal with linear elastic problems but also to deal with nonlinear, plastic, rheological, damage, and multi-physics coupling, which is more difficult to analyze.
4. Design Optimization
In order to reduce the cost of automobile manufacturing R&D and improve the economic benefits of actual output, R&D design should be optimized continuously, with the scale of optimization also increasing.
5. Massive Computing Requirements
Automobile manufacturer CFD applications require a large amount of calculation and a large amount of process communication, requiring the use of high-memory, high-frequency CPUs, high-bandwidth data buses, multi-CPU system configurations, and low-latency networks to ensure a high-performance system environment.
Solution introduction:
The professional HPC application analysis team at IEIT used unique testing tools to obtain the specific hardware platform requirements according to customer’s expectations for rebuilding and expanding their high-performance computing clusters and provide targeted and cost-effective HPC solutions that are environmentally sustainable. These solutions must satisfy the customer’s expectations of high performance, high density, and low-power consumption. Taking into account computing performance, server room space, overall power consumption, and machine cooling, IEIT provided high-performance computing solutions based on the latest generation of Intel platforms. To enhance the computing power of the platform, IEIT recommended the new flagship 1U dual-socket rack server NF5180M6 with Intel's new-generation Ice Lake processors.
NF5180M6 is a 1U dual-socket high-density computing rack server, based on Intel® Whitley platform Xeon® scalable processors. It is designed to maximize performance, density, and scalability. This powerful server is capable of adapting to the high-performance computing requirements of automotive manufacturing and other computing-intensive services necessary for high-density data centers. In addition, European customers must consider TCO and environmental sustainability in project bidding, which means a strong focus on reducing power consumption. Due to power supply limitation of the customer’s data center, a key requirement was that the power consumption of a single node should not be higher than 570W. So IEIT used the NF5180M6 T-type radiator model with better heat dissipation and power consumption performance. It was equipped with a platinum power supply and the BMC version of the latest fan control strategy to reduce overall energy usage and TCO further. The solution showcases IEIT's competitiveness and ability to enhance a wide assortment of industries with solutions that are green, powerful, efficient, and cost effective.
Customer Benefits
With its green and efficient HPC platform solutions and high-quality server products, IEIT has provided HPC infrastructure services which help customers run multiple HPC subsystems and more than 150 CAE applications that satisfy overall performance requirements, meet the expectation of customer for power consumption and environmental sustainability, and significantly reduces TCO of the HPC system. This solution improved utilization of CFD software applications and collision simulation in fields of engine, battery, motor, cooling system, lubrication system, air conditioning system, vehicle flow field, and aerodynamic development design in addition to vehicle thermal management analysis, water management analysis, aerodynamic noise analysis, and other scenarios.
