Hosted high performance computing environment provides the power for automotive simulators
Siemens Digital Industries Software has added scalable, on-demand, high performance simulation capabilities to Siemens Xcelerator as a Service (XaaS) with the launch of Simcenter Cloud HPC software. As part of the ongoing collaboration between Siemens and Amazon Web Services (AWS), the new service is hosted on AWS, optimised for Simcenter solver technologies, and managed by Siemens.
This service can help reduce the costs traditionally associated with high performance computing (HPC) deployments on premises, allowing organisations of all sizes to access the benefits of advanced simulation, gain deeper insight into the performance for their products, and drive more informed engineering decision making.
According to Jean-Claude Ercolanelli, Senior Vice President, Simulation and Test Solutions at Siemens Digital Industries Software, having access to sufficient HPC resources is essential to get the most value from engineering simulation and this issue is a constant challenge for engineering departments with evolving needs.
“By providing flexible, accessible and scalable HPC resources in the cloud, we are offering our customers a new freedom to rapidly scale up or down as their business requires, avoiding locked capital and paying only for what is used.”
Desktop Simulation
Simcenter Cloud HPC is accessible seamlessly from the desktop simulation tool with no additional configuration needed. It provides immediate access to near-unlimited computing capacity, avoiding the complexity and cost of accessing third-party cloud services. Organisations of any size can benefit from instant-on HPC availability.
For small and medium-sized businesses that struggle with the cost of on-premises heavy computing hardware, this product can help them to be more competitive in the industry. Larger enterprises can supplement computer hardware that they have on location with near-unlimited cloud computing when extra capacity is needed to meet deadlines. This opportunity allows for significant capital expenditure savings by reducing the amount of long-term investment needed for HPC.
Spectroscopy and light specialist, Heraeus Noblelight is a user of Simcenter Cloud HPC software and the company has found that the accessibility of the technology platform provided by this along with AWS, including Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (Amazon EC2), has provided the engineering team to see the potential to advance the accuracy and fidelity of their simulations while continuing to meet project deadlines and reducing run times for large models from days to hours.
“Models are becoming more accurate and we need to capture more physical realism. You can guarantee that we will frequently require more powerful HPC resources in the future,” says Dr Larisa von Riewel, Group Leader – CAE, Heraeus Noblelight.
Siemens Digital Industries Software is able to help Heraeus Noblelight and other organisations of all sizes to digitally transform using software, hardware and services from the Siemens Xcelerator business platform. Siemens’ software and the comprehensive digital twin enable companies to optimise their design, engineering and manufacturing processes to turn their ideas into the sustainable products of the future.
Gateway to CAE
Amazon Web Services is also being used as the cloud-based platform for Ansys simulation products.
By powering Ansys Gateway, AWS enables users to access popular Ansys products in one unique workspace and thereby helping to simplify access to faster, more flexible and highly scalable engineering solutions. Ansys Gateway is available in AWS Marketplace and makes it possible for customers to easily access, subscribe and configure Ansys applications from a single location. Customers will also benefit from the accelerated performance of Ansys applications enhanced on AWS.
The new AWS enabled product features on-demand access to Ansys applications and high-performance computing resources on the cloud as part of a strategy designed to make simulation software more affordable. Customers can manage and control computer-aided design (CAD) / computer-aided engineering (CAE) cloud consumption and costs on AWS while taking advantage of the scalable hardware and computing capacity. This provides seamless cloud support for both Ansys applications as well as other popular CAE/CAD software. With control over their hybrid architecture, customers can bring their own licences to Ansys Gateway powered by AWS and easily manage user access, permissions, data and security.
In addition to reducing time to market, customers can reduce costs by paying for cloud resources only when they are being used.
One user of Ansys products is America’s Cup participant, Emirates Team New Zealand. According to Steve Collie, aerodynamics coordinator at the team, it was surprising how easy and seamless it is to switch between the organisation’s internal computer cluster to the cloud with Ansys Gateway powered by AWS.
“We can quickly set up a workstation or cluster and select the best hardware. We can replace our hardware every day if we want, instead of replacing physical resources every four years. It’s fast and intuitive to switch back and forth from cluster to cloud as our needs change,”
According to Shane Emswiler, senior vice president of products at Ansys, the company’s goal has always been to make simulation accessible to as many startups, students and businesses – large and small – as possible. Providing easy, affordable access to Ansys’ solutions makes greater innovation and efficiency possible for all of its customers, senior vice president of products at Ansys.
“By working with AWS, we are able to allow broader access to HPC by bringing down the traditional hardware barriers that have limited innovation for many of our customers,” he says.
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