Formula One Team Accelerates High-Performance Computing with Altair

Altair reports on a new technical partnership agreement with the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team, who has returned to the motorsports series for the 2021 season. Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team engineers are using Altair Grid Engine to optimize the team’s HPC infrastructure with its workload scheduling and management solution.

“Across our aerodynamics department, we’re hugely reliant on high-performance computing to manage intensive workloads,” says Bill Peters, chief technology officer, Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team. “That includes the 10 terabytes of data the team produces on a daily basis. Altair’s solutions give us a consistent and powerful infrastructure, enabling our team to gain strategic and performance advantages within a limit of 30 teraflops by achieving higher throughput, smaller wait-times, and reduced downtime.”

HPC powers full-car simulations, which creates a real-world simulator; allowing drivers to understand how design changes will impact race-day performance of their AMR21 cars. Image courtesy of Altair.

Altair Grid Engine empowers the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team engineering department to ensure the tens of thousands of simulations and other compute-intensive tasks are consistently and correctly sequenced and coordinated, Altair reports. It provides access to HPC, necessary to powering simulations like wind tunnels, vehicle aerodynamics, tire performance, as well as fine-tuning design elements. HPC also powers full-car simulations, which creates a real-world simulator; allowing drivers to understand how design changes will impact race-day performance of their AMR21 cars. 

“The impressive Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team operates in an environment where every split-second counts, not just on the racetrack, but in terms of rapid and informed design decisions utilizing HPC,” says Sam Mahalingam, chief technical officer, Altair. “As Altair offers the industry’s most comprehensive HPC toolset, we are proud to be part of the story and will be cheering for the team over every lap of the Formula One season.” 

As a result of using Altair Grid Engine, the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One engineering team’s overall work throughput is faster, turgent requirements and results are prioritized, and applications and resources are used efficiently. Altair has helped the team to:

• achieve a sustained 97% use of HPC infrastructure;
• properly manage the 10 terabytes of data the team produces daily; and
• gain strategic and performance advantages within Formula One’s 25 teraflop limits by achieving higher throughput, reduced wait times and downtime.

To learn more, attend the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team’s presentation, “On and Off the Track, Every Second Counts: The Critical Role of HPC Optimization” at the Altair Global HPC Summit May 11-12. To register, click here. 

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.