May 2020 Summaries

Rescale has announced the general availability of Azure HB (Rescale Amber) and HC (Rescale Carbon) virtual machines (VMs), along with early access to HBv2 (Rescale Amber v2) VMs across various regions. The H-series VMs, part of Azure's latest high-performance computing offerings, include HBv2 VMs with 120 AMD EPYC 7002-series CPU cores and 480 GB RAM, designed for applications needing high memory bandwidth, such as fluid dynamics and weather modeling. The HB-series, with 60-core AMD EPYC processors, and HC-series, with 44-core Intel Xeon Skylake processors, are optimized for different computational tasks like explicit finite element analysis and molecular dynamics. Both series include 100 Gb/s EDR InfiniBand and support the latest MPI types and versions. Additionally, the announcement includes the availability of Azure Spot VMs, which together with Rescale’s HPC job orchestration and automated checkpoint restarts, help manage preemption risks. For further details or quotes, contact Rescale's sales team.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted the aerospace and defense industries, which initially entered 2020 with high growth expectations. Despite the decrease in commercial and consumer aerospace demand and the drying up of investment capital, advancements in technologies such as hybrid-electrification, urban air mobility, and space travel continue, largely driven by smaller, innovative companies utilizing high-performance computing (HPC) simulations to expedite development and reduce costs. Government contracts, particularly those from the Department of Defense and NASA, provide some financial stability for companies, while the shift to on-demand cloud resources allows for flexibility amidst economic uncertainties. The increased reliance on digital tools, including model-based systems engineering and multidisciplinary design optimization, is crucial for maintaining competitiveness and securing government contracts. This transition is seen as essential for companies to survive the downturn, capitalize on future demand, and maintain market share in the evolving aerospace landscape.

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies like Rescale have been forced to adapt to remote working environments, highlighting significant challenges such as inadequate VPN capacity, limited access to software licenses, and productivity losses due to infrastructure not designed for widespread remote work. While some companies attempt to enhance their current systems or outsource tasks to third-party data centers, these solutions present their own risks and delays. Alternatively, deploying workloads on public cloud infrastructure offers flexibility and scalability but requires substantial operational oversight and may not meet compliance standards for certain sensitive data. Managed platforms like Rescale provide a promising solution by leveraging cloud resources to offer remote access, budget management, secure access control, and software license management, while maintaining high security standards and operational compliance. These platforms help companies scale resources on demand, manage costs, and ensure seamless operation despite the distributed nature of modern workforces. As the pandemic has tested existing systems, future discussions will likely focus on ensuring that technology infrastructures are robust enough to empower users without imposing restrictions, prompting a reevaluation of practices to optimize remote teams and ensure pandemic-proof systems.

Companies have increasingly pivoted from their original business models to address the challenges posed by COVID-19, with many adopting advanced high-performance computing (HPC) solutions to facilitate such transitions. Manufacturers like Tesla and Apple have shifted production to essential medical supplies, while non-healthcare companies have leveraged their expertise in areas such as aerospace and automotive to produce ventilators and personal protective equipment. The adoption of flexible, heterogeneous HPC architectures has played a crucial role, enabling rapid adaptation and deployment of resources to new engineering challenges. Rescale, a cloud-based HPC platform, exemplifies this flexibility by providing diverse computing infrastructures and automating the selection and deployment processes for R&D needs across industries, including biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices. This has led to faster innovation cycles, with simulation and modeling increasingly accepted as part of the regulatory approval process. Rescale’s involvement in initiatives like the Tech Against Covid Consortium underscores its commitment to facilitating research and innovation, not only in medical fields but also in areas such as autonomous vehicle safety and storm prediction.