Success-Case

Satisfying Your Need for Speed: Server Technology Helps to Achieve Aerodynamic Vehicle Design

Mar 13, 2020 by GIGABYTE

A world-renowned automotive manufacturer uses Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation software, analyzing huge amounts of data to optimize the design of their vehicles. They selected GIGABYTE’s high density multi-node servers to build a high-performance computing cluster for their vehicle design center, making the most efficient use of the limited space available to deliver maximum computing power to their aerodynamic engineering team.

Since the fuel consumption of a vehicle will be affected by air resistance, an optimized chassis design will reduce drag and therefore improve fuel consumption efficiency.

Digital Technology Drives Innovation in Automotive Design

As digital technology advances rapidly, it has also changed the face of automotive engineering. To accelerate the design and development of vehicles, world-renowned automobile manufacturers have made huge investments in IT equipment and applied new technologies to the vehicle chassis design and development stage.

An aerodynamics engineer will first record data about airflow distribution and surface pressure on the vehicle body and use “Computational Fluid Dynamics” (CFD) simulation software to analyze this data, precisely calculating the air resistance of the vehicle body, and helping redesign the body shape to reduce the wind resistance coefficient during driving and therefore fuel consumption. The software will also simulate other measurements such as vehicle tire ground friction, load weight and durability when driving at high speed to ensure the stability of the car during actual testing, thereby reducing testing cost and risk.

Due to advances in digital technology, aerodynamic engineers can now use software to process and analyze huge amounts of data to better optimize vehicle design (shown in diagram)

Vehicle Design Relies on High Density Servers for Precise Calculations

To simultaneously and rapidly compute and interpret various streams of data to optimize vehicle chassis design, the systems used by aerodynamic engineers need to have powerful computing capabilities. Customers will therefore pay great attention to the systems CPU core count and memory performance. The stability and reliability of these systems are also highly valued.

The H261-Z60 is part of GIGABYTE’s H-Series family of high density multi-node servers that can meet the computing needs of aerodynamic engineering. This high density 2U 4 node server can support up to eight CPUs with a maximum of 256 cores in a single chassis, to maximize computing power provided in a limited space.

During stress testing of the H261-Z60, even though a large number of engineers connected to the system at the same time to run their workloads, the operation of the system was still very smooth and no errors were generated – leading the customer to be amazed at the performance of GIGABYTE’s server. It also performed brilliantly against various competitors in the SPEC CPU®2017 benchmark.

GIGABYTE’s H261-Z60 features 4 server nodes in a 2U chassis, making it suitable for high density compute applications. Compared with other server products currently on the market, it supports up to double the compute capacity, as well as providing flexible expansion availability and optimized power and cooling capabilities for more efficient power consumption and a reduction of operating expenditure.

In a Limited Space, GIGABTYE’s Servers Show Off Sophisticated Thermal Design

The customer also mentioned that the servers were to be deployed in an existing office building environment and not in a separate data center or server room, so it would not be feasible to use a specialized water-cooling system with a higher heat dissipation efficiency. Taking on this challenge, the GIGABYTE team immediately began to consider about the huge amount of heat energy generated by their high density servers when handling heavy computing workloads. This heat dissipation issue would require priority evaluation if the server was to be both placed in the warm indoor environment of an office building, and only used an air cooling system. 《Learn More: How powerful is liquid cooling? “Direct to chip liquid cooling” can solve the heat dissipation issue of high density servers》

According to the customer’s needs, the servers would be deployed in the office building of the aerodynamic engineering team rather than a dedicated data center or server room; the different heat dissipation requirements of these two spaces vary greatly. (as shown in diagram)

The air-cooled H261-Z60 can maintain stable operation even under high loads during pressure testing.

Rigorously Tested, So GIGABYTE Can Guarantee Excellent Quality

“GIGABYTE provides a complete solution”, emphasizes Senior Server Product Marketing Manager Andie Yen. “When beginning each new project, we will first carefully note the efficiency and environmental requirements specified by the customer, before choosing a product from our diverse and comprehensive line-up that will truly suit the customer’s application, and ensuring it can pass rigorous testing, all while providing the best customer service”. For this project, the customer was again 100% satisfied with GIGABYTE.

To meet our customers’ needs, GIGABYTE will first take into consideration the end-user application, before providing server products with both excellent performance, and stable and reliable system operation, as well as demonstrating the high quality level of service the GIGABYTE team is renowned for, giving us more opportunities to co-operate with different customers in various industries. Through co-operation with a world-renowned automobile manufacturer, the excellent quality of GIGABYTE’s servers have paved the way for great achievements in the field of high-speed automotive design.

《Learn More: Did You Know? GIGABYTE’s Servers Are Helping to Launch Europe’s Space Ambitions》