June 2023 Summaries

In the competitive automotive industry, auto parts manufacturers face the challenge of quickly designing new parts to secure lucrative contracts from major automakers, often under tight deadlines. One such manufacturer, already a Rescale customer, struggled to find a cloud provider capable of meeting its extensive GPU-powered computational needs at a feasible cost. By leveraging Rescale's platform and its expertise in computational R&D, the manufacturer was able to overcome these hurdles, gaining access to a scalable GPU infrastructure and optimizing their R&D software. This enabled them to conduct tens of thousands of simulations efficiently, eliminating previous guesswork and allowing for more accurate and competitive bids. This newfound engineering agility not only enhances the manufacturer's ability to innovate and win new business but also paves the way for future advancements in AI-driven R&D, providing a significant competitive edge in the market.

Rescale prioritizes compliance and security by adhering to stringent standards to protect customer data, emphasizing trust, data sovereignty, and privacy. The company holds ISO 27001 certification and undergoes annual SOC 2 Type 2 audits, including penetration testing, to ensure robust security measures. Rescale's compliance extends to FedRAMP authorization for federal cloud security and self-attestations such as TISAX for the automotive industry and CSA STAR for cloud service security. It also adheres to export compliance regulations like ITAR and EAR, ensuring strict access controls and encryption. Privacy regulations, including HIPAA, GDPR, and CCPA, are rigorously followed, with data processing agreements in place to protect personal data transfers. Rescale’s comprehensive security framework supports flexible configurations, aiming to foster customer trust and enable secure R&D innovation.

Zero Trust at Rescale is a comprehensive security methodology that integrates security architecture, policies, and procedures to provide robust protection for the Rescale Platform, its data, and customers, forming a core part of its defense-in-depth strategy. This approach focuses on the security of people, devices, networks, and workloads, ensuring that trust must be authenticated at every level and monitored continuously. Rescale employs AI/ML-integrated cybersecurity products, adheres to the NIST cybersecurity framework, and maintains high standards through certifications like FedRAMP Moderate, SOC 2 Type 2, and ISO 27001, validated by third-party audits. The security model ensures only authorized access to data, secure endpoints for users, authenticated network access, and isolated workloads, all implemented with the principle of least privilege. Ernest de Leon, who leads the Rescale Security and Trust Office, emphasizes that this security infrastructure not only protects data but also supports R&D innovation while mitigating risks.

The concept of the Helicarrier, which first appeared in Marvel's "Strange Tales" in 1965 and was reimagined for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, raises questions about its real-world feasibility. The blog explores the physics of a potential Helicarrier landing, particularly focusing on the challenges posed by its lift fan design and the implications for aircraft attempting a "bolter" landing. By using computational fluid dynamics software, simulations are conducted to assess whether an F-35 fighter jet could survive flying over the Helicarrier's lift fan, with results indicating a significant downward force that would likely result in the pilot's demise. The broader context discusses the democratization of advanced simulation tools, enabling non-experts to incorporate such analyses early in the design process, enhancing innovation and reducing the likelihood of flawed designs. The blog highlights the role of platforms like Rescale in making high-quality simulation accessible from anywhere, emphasizing ongoing advancements in simulation technology.

The shift to cloud-based high performance computing (HPC) is transforming digital research and development (R&D) by offering virtually unlimited computing capacity, flexibility, and cost efficiency, surpassing the limitations of traditional data centers. As the demand for HPC surges, the growth of specialized chips, such as GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs, is reshaping computational performance by providing task-specific processing power, which is crucial for applications in AI, machine learning, and big data analytics. However, this surge in chip diversity creates complexity in selecting optimal hardware for specific tasks. Rescale addresses this challenge with its Performance Profiles, a tool that automates the process of identifying the best chip types for specific R&D needs, based on actual performance benchmarks, thus allowing organizations to enhance the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their simulations. By leveraging Performance Profiles, companies like Kairos Power have realized significant improvements in cost-to-speed ratios, emphasizing the importance of informed hardware selection in driving innovation and maintaining competitive advantages in the rapidly evolving HPC landscape.

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has become an essential tool in engineering and scientific research, enabling the simulation and analysis of fluid flow, heat transfer, and related phenomena using numerical methods and computer simulations. Initially developed in the early twentieth century and significantly advanced with the advent of digital computers in the 1950s, CFD allows for the study of complex fluid dynamics problems that are pivotal in industries such as aerospace, automotive, energy, and biomedical. By understanding fundamental principles like viscosity, density, pressure, and velocity, engineers can leverage CFD to analyze forces, evaluate design efficiency, and optimize product performance. The use of numerical methods, including finite difference, finite volume, and finite element methods, underpins the accuracy of CFD simulations, with grid generation and boundary conditions playing crucial roles in capturing fluid flow features. CFD's transformative impact is evident in applications ranging from aerodynamic analysis to thermal management and medical device simulation, driving innovation and enhancing engineering and scientific understanding.

The emphasis on multi-cloud strategies is evolving beyond just cost efficiency and resilience to include the critical advantage of flexibility in architecture choices, which is particularly significant for research and development applications requiring high-performance computing. With cloud service providers rapidly introducing new chip architectures in partnership with major hardware vendors and even creating their own chips, organizations face the challenge of continuously adopting these innovations. Rescale addresses this challenge by providing a comprehensive platform that tracks the maturity, performance, cost, and sustainability of various architectures, helping organizations select the optimal configuration for their specific workloads. This platform, supported by Rescale's Maturity Index and Intelligent Computing Framework, offers organizations the ability to make informed decisions about cloud infrastructure investments and achieve significant performance gains and cost savings. Rescale's approach allows companies to leverage the latest technologies faster and maintain competitive advantages in their respective fields by ensuring their computing needs are met with the most current and effective hardware solutions.

High performance computing (HPC) plays a crucial role in scientific research, engineering, and product design by executing complex calculations and simulations, often involving massive data. However, the high costs and energy consumption associated with traditional CPU-based HPC systems have spurred the development of specialized computer chips that offer improved performance and energy efficiency. As Moore's Law decelerates, a variety of new chip architectures, including those developed by major players like NVIDIA, Google, AWS, and Microsoft, are transforming the semiconductor market. These specialized chips, such as GPUs, TPUs, and FPGAs, are designed to handle specific tasks like machine learning and AI with greater efficiency and lower power consumption than traditional CPUs. While these advancements open new possibilities for HPC, they also introduce complexities in choosing the right architecture and integrating them into existing systems, necessitating specialized expertise and consideration of cost, performance, and sustainability trade-offs. The continuous evolution in the semiconductor industry promises further innovations in HPC hardware, which are essential for driving significant advancements in research and development.

JTEKT Thermo Systems, a leader in industrial heating systems since 1967, is focusing on making its products cleaner and more energy-efficient to meet the growing demand for sustainable manufacturing. Facing the challenge of innovating while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and costs, JTEKT partnered with Rescale in 2018 to leverage high-performance computing for faster and more efficient product development. This collaboration has enabled JTEKT to reduce the time required for large-scale calculations and prototype experiments significantly, accelerating innovation by 75%. By using Rescale's platform, JTEKT can easily access cutting-edge computing resources and software, which plays a crucial role in its efforts to create carbon-neutral products and maintain its market leadership in the automotive, semiconductor, energy, and communications sectors.