Business

Atos has been selected by Austrian AVL List GmbH to deliver a new high-performance computing cluster based on BullSequana XH2000 servers along with a five-year maintenance service. As the world’s leading mobility technology provider for development, simulation and testing in the automotive industry, the company will rely on Atos’ supercomputer to drive more complex and powerful simulations, while optimising its energy consumption.

As a global supplier to the automotive industry, AVL provides its customers with highly complex computer simulations for the design, development and testing of powertrains, workpieces, drive units and large engines. Every step of the way, the processes are represented digitally and require high, reliable computer performance as well as storage capacity. The cluster is used for a wide range of applications, from finite element analysis (FEA) for structural optimisation and crash simulations to fluid mechanics simulations of combustion processes and battery cooling. Commercial software packages of well-known manufacturers as well as AVL-List’s own Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software package FIRE are used for this task.

The new computer network implemented by Atos has more than doubled the computational performance in engineering and therefore the processing times of computational tasks in customer projects could be reduced by more than half. In addition, it is possible to offer a greater variety of calculation results without having to access external compute resources such as cloud instances. This results in rapid and efficient adaptations of engineering workflows to new tasks.

With this cluster, AVL also benefits from a highly energy-efficient system, including Atos’ Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC). This technology has been developed to avoid overheating. It consumes significantly less electricity than conventional cooling systems while ensuring almost noiseless, particularly stable operation.

“AVL’s passion is innovation and Atos’ supercomputer meets that requirement in terms of performance and energy-efficiency. The Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC) technology of the XH2000 cluster has opened up an unprecedented performance range, with minimal energy requirements and a green footprint, because 95 per cent of the waste heat is not released into the environment, but is put to further use via the cooling water circuit,” explained Günter Bachler, Senior IT System Administrator, AVL List GmbH.

Stefan Kero, Head of Advanced Computing, Central Eastern Europe, Atos, added: “High-performance computers are among the key technologies of our time and have become indispensable in Sciences, Medical Research, Weather Forecast but also in the Industry, especially in digital product development. With HPC, industrial players can accelerate the construction of digital prototypes – which can be run through quickly and as often as desired in a multitude of variants – therefore gain flexibility and innovative strength. We are glad to be supporting AVL to simulate and test automotive technologies, for a safer mobility.”