Team New Zealand takes on the America’s
Cup with game-changing technology
Customer profile
Emirates Team New Zealand’s HPC solution speeds multihull boat
innovation with a 10-fold increase in design production
Company Industry Country Employees Website Emirates Team
New Zealand
Sports and Gaming
New Zealand
100
www.etnzblog.com
Business need
Emirates Team New Zealand needed
a high-performance computing (HPC)
environment to design a new class
of multihull boats in, for the 2013
America’s Cup competition.
Solution
The team partnered with Dell to
deploy an HPC cluster running the
Platform HPC stack Enterprise Dell
Edition featuring Dell™ PowerEdge
servers connected to Dell EqualLogic
storage through Dell Networking
switches. Together, they also
developed a social media strategy
to promote the Emirates Team New
Zealand brand globally.
Benefits
“We can now complete an entire boat design
test in three days using the Dell HPC cluster.
We’ve gone from 30 to 40 design candidates
being tested physically for our 2007 Cup
campaign to testing 300-400 designs for
this edition of the America’s Cup.”
Nick Holroyd, Technical Director, Emirates Team New Zealand
• Yacht design process revolutionized
with HPC solution
• Design prototyping increases 10fold through high-performance
environment
• Social media strategy connects
audiences and promotes global
sailing brand
• Creative design limits eliminated due
to virtualized environment
Solutions featured
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High-Performance Computing
Mobile Computing
Networking
Deployment Services
Support Services
Desktop Computing
Twice winner of the America’s Cup, Emirates Team New
Zealand relies on innovation to drive its cup dreams. In
2010, top competitor BMW Oracle Racing announced
a new class of boat for the 2013 cup – the wing-sailed
multihull AC72, spurring Emirates Team New Zealand to
move from monohull to multihull.
“In using
computational
design methods we
can examine the
solution with far
greater precision
than is possible with
physical testing,
which means we
can start to answer
the critical questions
that enable the
team to evolve and
push the limits of
design much faster.
Designing the AC72
in the Dell HPC
environment not
only gives us access
to a larger number of
possible candidates,
it enables us to
manipulate those
boats in a more
intelligent way than
was ever possible.”
Nick Holroyd, Technical Director,
Emirates Team New Zealand
2
This triggered bold plans to design and
build two massive 72-foot catamarans
for racing in the Louis Vuitton Cup
challenger selection series and the
America’s Cup finals. Recognizing that
technology would play a crucial role
in the development of the new AC72
multihull yachts, the team decided
to invest in a high-performance
computing (HPC) solution to test
design concepts prior to building
the final boats that would enter the
challenger series.
Move from reliance on
physical testing to computer
generated modelling
Previous yacht development involved
physical tank testing, in which scale
models of individual hulls were
tested for parallel hydrodynamics
as a predictor of actual race day
performance. Computer predictions
were only considered when correlated
with physical tank data. Nick Holroyd,
Technical Director, Emirates Team New
Zealand, says, “The transition to AC72
multihulls has meant a complete shift
in focus to technology where all our
prototyping is computer generated. Our
prediction of boat performance and the
design inputs required are all derived
computationally, which meant our
requirements for a high-performance
cluster suddenly exploded.”
Yacht design process revolutionized
with HPC solution
As the only commercially funded
team, the design of Emirates Team
New Zealand’s America’s Cup yacht
involves a careful balance of skill,
resources and costs. Emirates Team
New Zealand discussed its specific
requirements with Dell who then put
the team in touch with the Dell HPC
center located at the University of
Cambridge in the United Kingdom to
benchmark the new architecture and
tailor it specifically to the workload
required in designing the multihull
boats. “Typically we need 100 to 200
simulations to accurately measure
the performance of a potential boat
design across a range of conditions,
Technology at work
Services
Dell Deployment Services
Dell Support Services
– Dell ProSupport with Mission
Critical Next Business Day
Onsite Service
Hardware
Platform HPC Enterprise –
Dell Edition
Dell PowerEdge C6100
servers with Intel Xeon 5600
series processors
Dell PowerEdge R710 servers
Dell Networking 6248 and
6224 switches
Dell EqualLogic PS6000XV and
PS6000E storage arrays
Dell PowerVault MD3200 array
Dell Precision workstations
Dell Latitude laptops
QLogic® TrueScale™ 12800
InfiniBand switches
and we knew we needed to complete
so many design iterations within
a certain timeframe. In having the
opportunity to benchmark the
architecture with Dell we’ve ended
up with a machine that is specifically
tailored and therefore more
economical for the workload we are
demanding from it,” says Holroyd.
Emirates Team New Zealand’s AC72
catamaran designs are developed
within a powerful HPC environment
featuring Dell PowerEdge C6100
servers with Intel® Xeon® 5600 series
processors. The servers connect
through a low latency QLogic
TrueScale 12800 InfiniBand switch to
the Platform HPC stack Enterprise Dell
Edition, and Dell PowerVault MD3200
storage array.
Design prototyping increases 10fold through high-performance
environment
The team previously followed a threemonth cycle with around four tank
sessions scheduled per year, each
testing five to six new boat designs.
This enabled Emirates Team New
Zealand to evaluate 20-24 candidate
designs per year before choosing a
final boat to build. Through testing
designs in the HPC cluster, the
team has increased the number of
candidates 10-fold for the 2013 cup
challenge. Holroyd says, “We can now
complete an entire boat design test in
three days using the Dell HPC cluster.
We’ve gone from 30 to 40 design
candidates being tested physically for
our 2007 Cup campaign to testing
300-400 designs for this edition of the
America’s Cup.”
By using a computational environment
to test boat designs, Emirates Team
New Zealand can continue to fine-tune
each option prior to the final build.
Holroyd says, “In using computational
design methods we can examine the
solution with far greater precision
than is possible with physical testing,
which means we can start to answer
the critical questions that enable the
team to evolve and push the limits
3
of design much faster. Designing the
AC72 in the Dell HPC environment not
only gives us access to a larger number
of possible candidates, it enables us
to manipulate those boats in a more
intelligent way than was ever possible.”
Social media strategy connects
audiences and promotes global
sailing brand
With the whole nation behind them
and its previous reign as America’s Cup
holder from 1995 to 2003 bringing
in US$785.9 million to New Zealand’s
economy, Emirates Team New Zealand
is keen to provide the country and its
supporters with up-to-the-minute
details of its challenge. The team
engaged Dell to support the design
and implementation of Emirates Team
New Zealand’s social media platform
and strategy to communicate the
brand and promote New Zealand
sailing globally on its website and
through Twitter, Facebook and
YouTube. Grant Dalton, Managing
Director, Emirates Team New Zealand,
says, “The team takes its role as a
standard bearer for the New Zealand
marine industry very seriously. Every
time we race, the industry’s work is
under intense scrutiny from public
and the media. The Louis Vuitton Cup
and America’s Cup regattas represent
the top of the sport. It is no place for
second best.”
Design evolution fuels world’s
fastest boats through improved
communication
Emirates Team New Zealand was the
first team to launch an AC72 and fly
with both hulls clear of the water lifted
by hydrofoils, with the design of the
two AC72 yachts taking more than
140,000 hours. “With the move to
multihull yachts the whole balance of
our team has changed, as the ratio of
designers to sailors has been reversed
since the previous campaign. We have
improved the ability to communicate
with the less technical members of
the team because, in the Dell HPC
environment, we can show them
CAD models and overlay onto the
digital mock-ups the performance
characteristics of each design. In terms
of the way we work, the whole design
evolution has come to more closely
resemble a software development
program,” says Holroyd.
With a highly mobile team that spends
as much time on the water as off
it, the design team requires highperformance laptops to meet the
frenetic pace of the America’s Cup
campaign. “Design team members
take their work with them out on the
water to compare real time results
against calculated results and need
laptops with vast quantities of memory
to handle the computational load and
CAD models. Dell Latitude notebooks
provide us with the right level of data
security and performance to keep
our team operating under the most
challenging conditions,” says Holroyd.
Design limitations eliminated due to
virtualized environment
The design team can now build a
creative model of a boat without
any limitations from computing
performance. In working with CAD
models for the boats, Emirates Team
New Zealand needs workstations
of 32 gigabytes of memory just to
be able to open and manipulate
the designs. The team deployed a
virtualized environment to run its back
office featuring Dell PowerEdge R710
servers and Dell Networking 6248
and 6224 switches with storage for
the massive design models provided
by Dell EqualLogic PS6000XV and
PS6000E storage arrays. Holroyd says,
“Dell Precision workstations and Dell
Latitude notebooks provide the file
I/O performance we need, to create
complete models end-to-end without
having to resort to creating smaller
components that when bolted together
may in reality not actually match up. It’s
critical to our ability to deliver highly
accurate designs for the build, on
time, that we have the performance to
support the CAD environment.”
Focus remains on winning on
the water
Emirates Team New Zealand is
supported by Dell ProSupport with
Mission Critical Next Business Day
OnSite Service on all equipment. “The
beauty of having Dell ProSupport is
that we don’t even have to think about
it. My job is to recruit and manage
the right people and put the right
infrastructure in place for them to
exceed in their role as designers. When
we are ready to race it’s great to be
able to put my energy into helping the
team to win and not worry about the
technology,” says Holroyd.
For more information go to
www.DellHPCSolutions.com
“Dell Precision
workstations
and Dell Latitude
notebooks
provide the file
I/O performance
we need, to create
complete models
end-to-end without
having to resort to
creating smaller
components
that when bolted
together may in
reality not actually
match up. It’s
critical to our ability
to deliver highly
accurate designs
for the build, on
time, that we have
the performance
to support the CAD
environment.”
Nick Holroyd, Technical Director,
Emirates Team New Zealand
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September 2013. © Dell Inc. Dell, PowerEdge, EqualLogic, PowerVault, Precision and Latitude are trademarks
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