Manufacturers rely on computer-aided engineering (CAE) software. Similarly, as companies look to move their operations to the cloud. Of this week's release of Altair's HyperWorks 12.0, a CAE suite featuring sixteen updated products. Altair Launches HyperWorks Unlimited - Virtual for AWSNovember.
<img src='http://media2.hpcwire.com/dmr/hyperworks.jpg' alt=' width='95' height='63' />Manufacturers rely on CAE software providers to solve increasingly complex problems to deliver more competitive products through a streamlined product life cycle. As the availability of HPC innovations increases the pressure is put on CAE providers to keep up, as can be seen in Altair's recent release of HyperWorks 12.0.
Manufacturers rely on computer-aided engineering (CAE) software providers to solve increasingly complex problems to deliver more competitive products through a streamlined product life cycle. As the availability of high performance computing (HPC) innovations increases, the pressure is put on software companies to advance their tools to keep up with the potential offered by new and improved hardware.
Similarly, as companies look to move their operations to the cloud, CAE providers must be ready to jump on board to not only help their customers make the return on their investment, but to take advantage of the flexibility that the cloud enables.
These issues are at the heart of this week's release of Altair's HyperWorks 12.0, a CAE suite featuring sixteen updated products. While Altair emphasized additional features added to each product, usability across the enterprise and support for current HPC hardware played key roles in shaping this release.
Bringing Enterprise to the Cloud
Altair's enterprise goals began with cloud enablement, called HyperWorks on Demand (HWOD), which allows for the HyperWorks licenses to be hosted in public or private clouds. While this isn't new to HyperWorks 12.0, it is the starting point off of which additional cloud-enabled tools were designed.
Some primary changes to enhance usability came through changes to the platform's Collaboration Tools, which are responsible for organizing and managing simulation data. This was updated by allowing designers across a team to download and import CAD data directly from a product data management (PDM) system.
Altair has also invested a significant amount into its datacenter to enable its Hosted HyperWorks Units (HHWUs) along with the ability to access hardware cycles. HHWUs use Altair's unique licensing system, which requires only the licenses needed for the product with the highest “token value,” but not for any additional products. But unlike Altair's existing HyperWorks Units, the HHWUs offer licenses specifically for the cloud.
The third aspect of enabling enterprise in the cloud environment is HyperWorks remote visualization. “Because we're running these massive amounts of simulations, the biggest bottleneck in the industry has been being able to move this data back and forth from the server side,” said Ravi Kunju, head of strategy and marketing for Altair Enterprise Solutions. By adding remote visualization, Altair has been able to bypass this bottleneck altogether.
Next -- Tapping HPC >Tapping HPC
A major component of the HyperWorks suite that features HPC technology is HyperStudy, the data and design exploration tool for optimization. The 12.0 release brings to this product a redesigned GUI. Data exploration tools such as HyperStudy are dependent on high performance to manage the sheer volume of information.
“Altair is probably the only company out there that not only produces solvers for complex problems in addition to being able to model those problems, but it also provides an entire engine (HyperStudy) that has been completely enhanced for this release and allows a combination of not only doing one nominal simulation, but working on stochastic studies and designer experiments,” said Kunju.
The bottom line is that beyond providing solvers, HyperWorks is able to offer workload management infrastructure, collaboration tools to keep in sync with the PDM, design exploration tools and the ability to run these on large clusters.
But once you drill past the enterprise layer, Kunju pointed out that customer demand together with innovations in HPC have driven specific changes for many other solvers in the HyperWorks offering.
For example, the 12.0 release of AcuSolve offers noise level prediction, both by calculating fluid and structural noise sources. Simulating noise levels is a relatively compute-intensive task, meaning that hardware limitations have prevented this feature from appearing in previous versions.
However, customer demand for these types of predictions also played a key role in this feature's development. One notable example is the rail industry, whose trains must comply with specific noise regulations.
Other solvers are taking advantage of high performance hardware thanks to newly added support for GPUs. Detlef Schneider, senior vice president for solver products at Altair, explained that as models get bigger and bigger, the demand for support for new hardware capabilities becomes even greater, which led Altair to not only add GPU support, but to also invest heavily in scalability to keep up with the increasing number of cores in high performance systems.
Stepping beyond the pure solver side is a focus on multiphysics, which requires HPC facilities and user interfaces that make this available to each user within a company. Multiphysics typically involves coupling products to perform, say, thermal analysis together with structural analysis. However, some solvers are capable of running multiphysics without the assistance of another product.
But because of HyperWorks licensing structure, integrating information from multiple solvers is essentially the same as doing multiphysics with a single solver since the licensing is based on the number of CPUs or GPUs used in both cases. For Altair, the hope is that this (like its original and hosted licensing models) will increase usability across all releases.
Tags:acusolve,Altair,cae,computer aided engineering,high performance computing,hosted hyperworks units,HPC,hyperworks 12.0,licensing
Company ProfileStanley Black & Decker (SBD) is a diversified global provider of hand tools, power toolsand related accessories, mechanical access and electronic security solutions, healthcaresolutions, engineered fastening systems, and more. The company delivers the hardworking,innovative, powerful tools that help professionals around the world build, repair, andprotect the world’s most valuable things.SBD is the leader in tools and security with brands including Stanley Tools, DEWALT,Mac Tools, Porter-Cable, and more.
Its products range from airport doors to residentiallocks and deadbolts to the hydraulic breakers that rescue trapped earthquake survivors.According to the company, 'No matter where you live, what car you drive, what storesyou shop at, or what building you work in, you can bet that we had a hand in making itwork. And you can guarantee that we’ll keep making it work.' The Challenge: Improving the Capacity for Design Optimizationand InnovationAs a global power tool leader, SBD is constantly seeking ways to maintain a competitiveedge and bring better-performing products to market faster. In other words, even if SBD could justify the expense of acquiring and maintaining an HPCsystem, could the company ensure availability of the required costly CAE software licenses,and maximize utilization of these licenses on the system?“We understood the business case and knew this method was necessary — but we wereunsure whether a traditional hardware solution would give us the results we wanted,regarding calculation time for the optimization methods. We didn’t want to make a hardwareinvestment and then have trouble getting the results we needed,” says Syma.The Solution: HyperWorks Unlimited with Altair SolversSBD secured offers from three leading HPC hardware providers but were still concernedabout the additional licensing cost necessary to truly take advantage of the system —to optimize use of the software licenses in a cost-effective way. The complexity ofmanaging an HPC system was also a concern.Then Altair introduced SBD to HyperWorks Unlimited, a fully managed HPC appliancefor CAE. This turnkey appliance includes pre-configured HPC hardware and software, withunlimited use of a wide variety of Altair HyperWorks™ applications plus Altair PBS Works™ forHPC workload management.The team was already familiar with Altair software, in particular the Altair Radioss™structural analysis solver as well as Altair HyperMesh™, Altair HyperView™, and AltairMotionSolve™.
SBD engineers ran a benchmark study that proved Radioss in conjunctionwith Altair HyperStudy™ would be equivalent in accuracy and performance to theLS-DYNA/optiSLang solution they had been using. Based on the results, SBD decidedto move forward with the Altair HyperWorks Unlimited solution.“Radioss with HyperStudy is proven to perform just as well as our LS-DYNA solution withoptiSLang,” says Syma. “We also investigated more products in the HyperWorks suite andfound their inclusion made HyperWorks Unlimited even more attractive — a traditionalHPC system plus a standalone solver license purchase doesn’t provide the same value.And having a single provider as reliable as Altair means we just make one call for supporton any part of the solution — hardware or software. This is the way HPC should be for allCAE engineers — this simple, this powerful, this reliable.”The Result: Expanded CAE Capabilities for Unlimited ExplorationSBD chose a 160-core HyperWorks Unlimited system, which Altair delivered and installedin just a few days. “The system just works,” says Syma. “It’s bringing up our utilization withno performance or maintenance issues to date. HyperWorks Unlimited is exactly what weneeded, top-performing solvers packaged and delivered on pre-configured hardware that’seasy to set up and use.
It also comes with a full suite of CAE and HPC products that will scaleup to meet all our optimization requirements, without the need to worry about buying morelicenses. All the configuration work is done for us, we have all the software we need forunlimited exploration, and it’s affordable.
It’s almost too good to be true.”Altair provides full support for HyperWorks Unlimited hardware and software, a veryimportant decision factor for SBD. Syma adds, “We’re new to HPC, so our IT team neededto feel comfortable that the solution would be easy to manage without hiring new staff orslowing down our engineers. With HyperWorks Unlimited, we don’t have to be HPC expertsto get the top performance we need from our CAE applications.”Now SBD engineers have new optimization capabilities and can embrace simulation-drivenexploration to meet their design requirements, exploring concepts more deeply, reducingcycle times and making better decisions faster. Engineers can perform their optimizationruns over a weekend instead of a week. SBD plans to expand usage at its current site andthen bring the same level of HPC capabilities to other sites.
Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2023
Categories |