Voltaire Ltd. announced that Audi has implemented Voltaire’s Grid Director switches as part of an HP supercomputer to advance Audi’s auto safety standards. This is the auto industry’s fastest supercomputer and is ranked No. 81 on the TOP500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers.

The high-performance computing system helps save days of computing time along with unnecessary costs for vehicle safety simulations. The use of Voltaire InfiniBand switches and software for the supercomputer’s cluster interconnect greatly improves the simulation software’s performance, allowing for deeper and faster analysis and decreasing the design time needed for new car models.

Audi’s 29.184-teraflop (peak performance) system is based on HP Cluster Platform 3000BL, a system built using 608 nodes supporting HP ProLiant BL460c server blades connected by Voltaire Grid Director 9024 20 Gigabits/second (Gbps) double data rate (DDR) InfiniBand switches. The system uses ESI’s PAM-CRASH 2G simulation software to perform crash simulations for various Audi car models.

Voltaire Grid Director switches use 20 Gbps InfiniBand technology, which provides high bandwidth and very low latency to enhance the infrastructure and application performance. The switches provide the throughput and scalability needed to capture the full power of the servers to calculate the tremendous volumes of data generated during the simulation process. The HP supercomputer enables Audi to run more model simulations overnight, thus ensuring an effective design process that enhances the analysis of the safety elements of its vehicles.

“We are working with HP and ESI Group to provide Audi with a high-performance system that helps them design better and safer cars more efficiently,” said Asaf Somekh, vice president of strategic alliances, Voltaire. “By including Voltaire’s 20 Gbps switches into its solution, Audi can speed up design time for new car models, saving costs and positively impacting the bottom line.”

“Audi has slashed days off the computing time required for vehicle safety simulations through its HP high-performance computing system running on Voltaire switches, lowering overall costs,” said Ed Turkel, manager, product and solution marketing, Scalable Computing & Infrastructure, HP. “HP’s optimized clustered solutions for computer-aided engineering applications enable customers to run more complex simulations faster, speeding time to result and delivering tangible return on investment quickly.”