Analytics Will Optimise Cloud Investment Of Auto, Aviation Cos

It doesn’t seem the cloud computing buzz will abate any time soon, albeit some is hyperbole. The claims about cloud may be partially right and some are no more than promises. In a more simplistic sense, cloud computing applies more to datacentres- where large amount of computing takes place, and at times to High Performance Computing (HPC). As cloud computing slowly gains traction in the Indian market, companies should also pay due attention to the kind of software that sits on top of the cloud infrastructure. This can be an important item on the list when doing the due diligence for selecting cloud providers. Biztech2.com speaks with Kuruvilla Lukose, Chief Technology Officer - Altair Engineering India on the cloud infrastructure software offering from Altair Engineering.

How does the PBS Professional software fit into effective management of the High Performance Computing centre running on the cloud computing model?

PBS Professional is a software infrastructure product. Datacentres are challenged with an inequality in computing demand and the resources to fulfil the processing. This results in a constant fight to access the resources as demand always outstrips supply and the number of jobs waiting to be processed at the computing nodes keeps increasing. Vendors cannot put in additional hardware due to cost considerations.

This demand - supply mismatch results in data packets getting scheduled on the basis of how small and big they are. One has to know whether an array of jobs executed in a certain sequence will run faster in aggregate than certain other sequence of jobs, because they would prove more advantageous for the customer.

There exists this whole business of managing the workflow, which includes uploading the data, monitoring the progress to be able to look at results along the way and killing or terminating a very long job that is of no use.

In order to run the HPC centre effectively, there is a need of software that can sit on top of the hardware and perform the aforementioned processes effectively and with speed. This is where PBS Professional fits in.

Which is the key differentiator of PBS Professional that stands out from the competitor’s offerings?

The PBS Professional’s resource management functionality efficiently balances the resource matching between workloads and computers. It’s a highly secure environment with a web based submission tool.

There are other tools like software and license usage optimisation. The analytics inside the software, hitherto known as ‘PBS Analytics’, offers the intelligence to adjust and match-up to the inconsistencies in license and software availability.

In a typical scenario of having an HPC centre, there is a process of continuous job uploading and monitoring of throughput & performance characteristic. In such a scenario, companies usually face the issue of relative shortage of HPC software licenses as compared to the software available to run on machines. So at times there are software licenses available but not enough software to run on machines.

This issue prompts the need of a solution that would study past data of peak and low loads and identify trends and patterns to determine the software and related resources required.

How are your offerings in computer design simulation, which require high volume computing resources, helping auto and aviation companies?

In the auto, aviation, heavy machinery and the consumer products space, small improvements in design efficiency can translate into huge monetary savings on an aggregate basis. The reason being they are designed once and then mass produced. So, even a kilogramme reduction in weight of one piece of the product can bring tremendous savings. For example, in the airline sector, reduction of a miniscule amount in the weight of the aircraft can convert savings in the form of less ATF usage - which contributes most to the airlines’ balance sheet. It can bring savings in raw material usage and eliminate wastage. Raw material costs have sky rocketed in the recent past and aircraft manufacturers are constantly looking for ways to cut down on these costs. Hence any kind of cut in raw material cost is welcomed. The simulation software offered by us can help designs to be tweaked and adjusted, modified to the last bit of accuracy.

Another major issue in India is increase in road accidents and the resultant loss of life. The Altair Engineering’s crash analysis software enables automotive manufacturers to design cars that can increase the probability for passengers to survive fatal accidents.

Auto companies have to expend huge amount of computational resources of their HPC infrastructure to create about 30-40 simulations of the automotive vehicle crashing with either an hard embankment, pole in the middle of the road, another car, truck, etc say from the front or the side and how it would impact the car. After the impact analysis they would decide on the best engineering design for the vehicle that would be light but safe enough for the passenger.

The HPC infrastructures of the auto, aviation companies can benefit immensely, when put on the cloud. The software analytics provided by the cloud provider can help these companies in making the best use of their investments on cloud. It would drive faster processing of computations and thus result in accurate simulations.