January 2021 Summaries

Rescale, a leading hybrid HPC cloud platform for digital R&D, has been recognized for the third consecutive year on Y Combinator's Top Companies list, highlighting its significant role among innovative startups. Founded in 2011 by former Boeing aerospace engineers and backed by notable investors such as Jeff Bezos and Microsoft, Rescale aids over 200 customers across various industries, including aerospace and life sciences, by facilitating cloud adoption and powering technological breakthroughs. The company experienced a significant increase in platform usage in 2020, doubling the number of jobs submitted and software applications available. Rescale is part of an exclusive group of 134 companies valued at over $300 billion combined, and the inclusion in Y Combinator's list underscores its impact in the startup ecosystem. The platform enables research scientists and engineers to perform complex simulations and AI workloads using optimized cloud-based solutions, thereby accelerating product R&D cycles.

In 2021, the number of applications supported by the platform more than doubled to over 660, showcasing several key updates. Highlights include the integration of NICE DCV on AWS and Microsoft Azure, offering a secure remote display protocol for delivering desktops and applications across cloud and data center environments. Other notable updates feature software like Abaqus 2021X for advanced engineering solutions, Ansys Polyflow for polymer processing analysis, and BeeGFS, a high-performance parallel file system optimized for scalability and data throughput. Additionally, COMSOL Multiphysics enhances physics-based modeling, while LAMMPS focuses on materials modeling through molecular dynamics simulation, and PowerFLOW aids in product design via computational fluid dynamics. The author, Jolie Hales, is an award-winning filmmaker and former Disney Ambassador, who also engages in acting, singing, and emceeing.

Rescale has clarified that it is unaffected by the SolarWinds Orion hack, as it neither currently uses nor has ever used the Orion platform, and has no plans to do so in the future. The company acknowledges widespread industry concern regarding the hack but assures that its systems have not experienced any negative impact, compromise, or breach related to the incident. Although Rescale employs Pingdom, a SolarWinds acquisition, for external monitoring and uses SolarWinds Papertrail for its marketing website, these tools are not integrated with Rescale's systems or platform, and neither is known to be compromised by the hack.