Audi Advances Auto Safety Standards with Auto Industry’s Fastest Supercomputer

May 8th, 2008

AUDI AG recently built the auto industry’s fastest supercomputer to advance safety standards. Crucial in optimizing car safety, the new system is based on ESI Group’s PAM-CRASH 2G simulation software and an HP Cluster Platform 3000BL system, providing 15.36 teraflop/s of computing performance for crash simulation models of Audi. The supercomputer implementation places the leading premium car manufacturer at No. 123 on the TOP500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers, making it the auto industry’s fastest system.

With the new hardware and software, Audi was able to raise their expectations for design simulation. For example, airbag models now routinely take into account fluid-structure interactions, leading to realistic interactions of the airbag with structures and occupants. Furthermore, prediction testing for material rupture, which usually requires high resolution models, can now be treated using a multi-scale approach. This helps save days of computing time and unnecessary costs.

Audi selected HP, a recognized industry leader in high-performance computing (HPC), to implement technology that would provide enhanced reliability, high server density and computing power. Audi installed the HP Cluster Platform 3000BL, a system built using 320 nodes based on HP ProLiant BL460c server blades and the InfiniBand cluster interconnect. This HPC system provides the computing power and speed needed to calculate the tremendous volume of data generated during the simulation process.

With the HP BladeSystem c-Class architecture coupled with the HP Dynamic Smart Cooling management solution, this supercomputer requires a quarter less floor space and consumes a quarter less power than a traditional rack-based configuration. In addition, the blade configuration provides simple hardware maintenance, cabling and system administration and has outstanding scalability.

Entry Filed under: Safety Test, Simulation