Opening up the H
H
igh performance computing
(HPC) appears to have
reached a tipping point as
its use among manufacturers has
expanded dramatically, enabling
design engineers and researchers to
design and build devices with unique
structures and properties.
In what is a highly competitive
world, HPC is being seen as a
‘game changer’ and the market is
seeing steady growth. According to
research from market forecasting
consultancy IPC, the HPC market
could be worth in excess of $31billion
by 2019, cutting as it does across
many sectors including academia,
government and industry.
Some specific areas that have
shown great benefit from HPC include
life sciences, manufacturing, oil
and gas, weather modelling and
prediction.
Traditionally viewed as a
specialised back-room art, HPC is
fast becoming a strategic technology
that is being used by a growing range
of sectors to remain competitive.
So is HPC helping to fuel a
recovery in manufacturing and virtual
product development?
12
While HPC is being used to
power computer aided engineering
and analysis solutions among Tier
One manufacturers – where its use
has grown apace – its adoption
among small to medium sized
manufacturers (SMEs) remains
limited. Understanding the various
technologies isn’t always easy,
neither are the advantages or costs
associated with HPC.
“For many companies,
supercomputing is associated
with brilliant scientists working
in laboratories, but that view is
beginning to change,” explains
Professor Mark Parsons, executive
director and associate dean for
e-Research at the Edinburgh
Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC) in
Edinburgh University.
“We’re seeing HPC becoming more
mainstream and it’s being adopted
by a growing number of companies,”
he continues. “EPCC was set up in
1990 and, since then, we have done
numerous projects with a growing list
of companies.”
Prof Parsons joined EPCC in 1994
and has since worked on a number of
industrial contracts.
“HPC is becoming
more mainstream
and it’s being
adopted by a
growing number
of companies”
Prof Mark Parsons
“We started with a core team
of four or five people and our work,
initially, was driven almost entirely by
government funding. Over the years,
we spun out a company successfully
and, despite going through a difficult
period in the mid to late 1990s
when activity collapsed and we had
to cut staff numbers from more than
100 to less than 10, we have seen
a marked recovery in the past few
years.” Employment is now back to
more than 100 people and EPCC runs
nearly all the UK’s HPC resources.
Working with industry has been
key to the centre’s success; EPCC is
funded solely by the service contracts
it has won.
“While we don’t receive core
funding, it has meant much greater
freedom for us to ‘do stuff’,“
concedes Prof Parsons. “While we
may have the freedom to go out and
work with industry to make money, we
are aware that we have an obligation
to help the broader economy.”
Fortissimo
While the EPCC was focused on the
domestic economy, it was keen to
extend its role to the European level.
22 November 2016
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COVER STORY
The use of high performance computing has tended to be
prohibitively expensive for smaller companies, but that is
PC market place
www.newelectronics.co.uk
Geometry: Koenigsegg. Image: IconCFD
to HPC and simulation experts from
across Europe who can help them
get the best out of their systems.
Companies can, via the cloud, access
computationally intensive digital
simulations.
“Computers are becoming more
powerful and the benefits they can
offer are becoming increasingly
apparent.”
Advanced simulations are
becoming more important to a
growing number of industrial sectors,
Prof Parsons believes, adding:
“Businesses, which otherwise
could not afford to run advanced
22 November 2016
simulations, should be given the
necessary tools and access.”
One stop shop
no longer the case. By Neil Tyler.
“The Fortissimo project is about
doing what we do, but at the EU
scale,” says Prof Parsons. “Most
countries have a national HPC service
and the idea behind Fortissimo
was to stimulate the development
of better products and services
by bringing those resources and
knowledge together.”
Fortissimo is part of the EC’s
I4MS initiative, set up to help SMEs
to access HPC across Europe and to
strengthen the competitiveness of
European businesses.
“A growing number of SMEs rely
on modelling and simulation for their
business,” explains Prof Parsons,
“and we felt that they would benefit
from improved access to HPC.”
Many larger industries are putting
pressure on their supply chain to use
HPC services and products, but the
cost of owning and maintaining these
systems is considerable and, for
many companies, it is not affordable.
“It’s certainly not cheap,” Prof
Parsons notes. “Simple projects can
require many thousands of 3D CAD
models and you find, as I have over
the past 20 years, that when you talk
to SMEs about spending thousands
of pounds, they need to be convinced
that investing in simulation software,
rather than in new production
equipment for example, is the best
use of limited resources.
“Fortissimo was designed to try
and tackle this. Not only does it allow
smaller businesses to access HPC
resources, it also affords them links
SUPERCOMPUTING
Below: Designers
of the One: 1
‘megacar’ used
high performance
simulation to replace
expensive wind
tunnel testing
When Fortissimo was established
in 2013, coordinated by Edinburgh
University, it had partners that
included manufacturing companies,
application engineers, IT solution
providers and cloud service providers
from 14 European countries.
“We wanted to create a ‘one
stop shop’ in order to simplify the
provision of tools and services,” says
Prof Parsons. “Simulation requires
enormous amounts of computing
power and, while large businesses
have that capability, we wanted to be
able to extend those opportunities to
smaller businesses.”
Through funded experiments,
Fortissimo has helped SMEs to take
advantage of the business benefits
enabled through HPC technologies.
“Since it was established, the
project has helped more than 50
European SMEs to improve their
business, increase efficiency or
simply save money,” he adds.
The project’s goal was to create a
viable and commercially sustainable
ecosystem. Earlier this year, the
partners launched Fortissimo 2 with a
call for HPC-Cloud based application
experiments.
“Over its life, Fortissimo 1 has
worked with SMEs and the projects
tended to be based on smaller
experiments probably costing no
more than £250,000. Fortissimo 2
is intended to extend this project and
we are already working on 25 new
projects,” Prof Parsons explains.
This latest round of projects has
a particular focus on the simulation
of physical processes of high
performance data analytics.
At the core of Fortissimo 2
are three tranches of application
experiments driven by the needs of
small businesses, bringing together
companies and businesses from
across the value chain. “Our aim is
to develop new and improved design
13
COVER STORY
SUPERCOMPUTING
processes, products and services,”
says Prof Parsons.
Success
One significant success for the
Fortissimo project is the development
of One:1 – the first production
‘megacar’ – by Koenigsegg, the
Swedish based designer and
manufacturer of high performance
vehicles. The design of high end
vehicles depends on the accurate
prediction of air flow and, for a
company like Koenigsegg, that usually
requires the use of either advanced
simulation or extensive wind tunnel
tests, both of which would normally be
prohibitively expensive.
“By partnering with Fortissimo,
Koenigsegg could access the ICON
Cloud-based HPC service for a fraction
of the cost of running its own system,”
explains Prof Parsons. “By using HPC,
Koenigsegg didn’t have to use wind
tunnel testing in the development of
One:1.”
Fortissimo’s services not only
helped to reduce development costs,
but also allowed the car to be brought
to market more quickly than would
have been the case using traditional
methods.
“According to the company, it saw
a 30% reduction in time-to-market,
compared to previous projects,” says
Prof Parsons, “and this is just one of
the project’s success stories.
“The project has helped numerous
companies to improve time to
market, reduce costs and improve
the quality of their offerings through
greater accuracy and fidelity of their
simulations.”
Since most modern HPC hardware
is based on commodity processors
and components, there is no longer
the need for specialised processors.
“Almost all HPC systems are based
on commodity processors from Intel,
AMD or IBM,” explains Prof Parsons.
However, in many HPC systems,
accelerators or GPUs help to speed
applications.
The total amount of usable memory
14
How Fortissimo differs from other Clouds
Fortissimo provides manufacturing companies with access
to state of the art HPC resources managed by the project’s
academic and commercial providers.
In the UK, EPCC provides access to ARCHER, a Cray XC30
with 118,080 processor cores; in Germany, HLRS provides access
to a Hazel Hen, a Cray XC40 with 185,088 processor cores. Each
delivers several Petaflops of computing power.
For many industrial users, smaller systems will deliver
sufficient capability. For example, EPCC’s SGI ICE XA provides
2016 cores; more than enough for most SMEs.
Fortissimo has found that, in general, access to expertise is
at least as important as access to large-scale systems and says
this sets its apart from traditional Cloud computing providers.
is critical. “Most HPC users will say
the bigger, the better when asked
about the size of system memory,”
according to Prof Parsons.
Usable memory size is often an
enabling factor for many large HPC
applications, as is efficient disk
storage. As many HPC applications
scale, they often require large
amounts of storage for input data,
intermediate results, and output data.
“The costs are not insignificant,”
says Prof Parsons.
Both the automotive and aerospace
industries use simulation in lieu of,
or in addition to, physical testing.
Scalability is a critical issue when
it comes to delivering efficient
turnaround times, especially when
each project could be involving
hundreds of jobs to fully explore a
design.
“Predictive simulation is becoming
more important as manufacturers use
computer simulation to predict the
performance of a product before it
has been designed. These industries
are using so many new materials that
simulation is crucial to understanding
how they will behave.”
At the end of October 2016,
“Not only does
Fortissimo
allow smaller
businesses to
access HPC
resources, it also
affords them
links to HPC
and simulation
experts from
across Europe.”
Prof Mark Parsons
Fortissimo launched the Fortissimo
Marketplace, a platform developed for
brokering HPC services.
“Today, we have more than 139
partners and operate in more than
19 European countries. Fortissimo
is working and we intend with the
Marketplace to make it even easier
for SMEs to access and use HPC
services,” Prof Parsons notes.
According to IDC, $1 spent on HPC
sees an average return of revenue of
more than $356 and $38 in profits.
“The Marketplace was conceived
to take the complexity out of
procuring HPC services and to allow
SMEs to achieve those kinds of
benefit. Through turnkey packages
or Fortissimo’s matching services,
SMEs will be able to access a
broad range of advanced simulation
and modelling services, as well as
software applications, expertise and
tools. Importantly, we are opening
the Marketplace to enterprises and
institutions that are not Fortissimo
partners,” Prof Parsons explains. “We
are not only offering different types of
membership, but have also created a
portal through which companies will
be able to access HPC services when
they need them and we can now offer
pre-paid and pay-per-use services.
“Crucially this platform will enable
providers to distribute solutions more
widely.”
While Fortissimo and Parsons
are looking to the future with great
enthusiasm, Brexit has clouded the
UK’s future participation.
“Brexit is a concern and it will be a
lot harder to attract the best and the
brightest,” says Prof Parsons.
“Brexit has made us rethink our
roadmap and we have created a
standalone company which, depending
on how negotiations go as we look to
leave the EU, means we could relocate
elsewhere in Europe, should that be
required,” he suggests.
Evaluating the many possible
scenarios associated with Brexit could
well require the computing power of
an HPC.
22 November 2016
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