VIEWPOINT | HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING AND ENGINEERING ANALYTICS SERVICES FROM DELL

Just about everyone knows Dell Inc. for its laptops and desktop computers. Dell is also a key player in the HPC market, with a focus on the specific needs of automotive customers.

Dell teams are providing automotive customers with project-specific solutions to solve increasingly complex computing challenges in everything from design and analysis to engineering and manufacturing. Beyond just hardware, Dell is able to leverage its HPC and engineering teams to build complete turnkey systems and complementary services to deliver effective solutions for each customer's needs.

Mike Harmon, Dell's director of engineering services, and Blake Gonzales, a Dell HPC computer scientist and electrical engineer, describe the company's capabilities.

Where does the auto industry use high-performance computing today?

Harmon: The three biggest areas for HPC in the automotive sector are safety (crash analysis), aerodynamics (fluid flow) and noise/vibration/harshness (finite element analysis). There's also a growing use of HPC capabilities in rendering and virtual manufacturing. This expansion is being driven by lower computing costs and recognition by the industry that performing more engineering analysis before prototyping can save time and money and, more important, shorten the time to bring a new vehicle, subsystem or component to market.

Gonzales: Today a carmaker can design an entire vehicle inside and out, crash-test it and confirm its safety and quality before actually bending any metal. This level of virtual simulation leads to tremendous cost and time savings, and it enables product developers to identify and correct design and performance issues much earlier.

In the past, this level of capability cost tens of millions of dollars and was available only to large carmakers. As the cost of compute power declines, many more suppliers are gaining the ability to solve increasingly complex problems. Engineers now have the ability to test for millions of variables, instead of thousands. HPC technology is increasingly affordable, and that is leading to increased adoption throughout the automotive supply base.

What does engineering services add to HPC?

Harmon: Dell's Engineering Analytics offering allows us to bring engineering know-how to our technology. We have a deep bench of professional engineers in electrical, mechanical, manufacturing and software engineering at Dell. Our team works with clients in aerospace, heavy equipment and consumer products industries, and that helps us to offer a new perspective into the discrete problem-solving approach that auto teams are working through.

So when it comes to solving automotive problems, we bring both the technology to quickly run sophisticated algorithms and the talent and experience to help interpret the results and move forward with fresh ideas.

What is the pace of growth in demand for engineering services?

Harmon: The market across all industries for engineering services is expanding by about 30% per year. We don't see that pace slowing anytime soon, especially in automotive. Growth is being driven by the need to get products to market faster. Nobody in the auto industry today wants a three-year product development timetable.

Carmakers and their suppliers have specific problems they want to solve. They need the best possible configuration, but they also want technical and engineering support to find and implement the best results. Our mission is to provide complete turnkey solutions.

What about support for short-term projects?

Harmon: The engineering and analysis workload isn't always predictable. Automotive companies have always looked for ways to minimize fixed cost, even more so following the recent downturn. With our services, we can provide a very quick response when a company needs immediate help, and then disappear when the project is complete.

Does it matter whose HPC solution a customer uses?

Gonzales: Yes! Although most HPC hardware involves similar interconnects and protocols, it is the HPC solution and services that make all the difference.

The focus of the Dell HPC team is to maximize customer's investment in application software by developing a well-tuned HPC system. Dell has deep understanding in core automotive applications like LS-DYNA, ANSYS, and Fluent. We want to eliminate the barriers to innovation and give customers good value for the technology solutions we deliver.

Are you expanding into new service areas?

Harmon: Telematics and connectivity are growing very quickly in the automotive sector, and these are very interesting areas for us.

To learn more about Dell's HPC and Innovation Services, please contact Kirsten Billhardt at kirsten_billhardt@dell.com, click HERE or visit http://dell.com/engineering.