CLOUD

By Nolin LeChasseur, Platform Computing Inc. -- Today's competitive aviation industry demands far more than power from an aircraft engine. It demands thrust at the lowest possible cost, the highest levels of reliability, maximum fuel efficiency and longevity of its products. In an effort to lower its production costs and speed its time to market, Pratt & Whitney needed to reduce the amount of physical testing done on its products, and increase its computer aided simulations during the design and development stages. This two-pronged approach would provide Pratt & Whitney with the flexibility to explore design alternatives before building a product, and reduce the exorbitant costs incurred by physical testing. However, computer aided simulations such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and (structural) Finite Element Analysis (FEA) required intensive compute power. And the compute environments needed to run these simulations were too large and complex to administer manually. As a result, Pratt & Whitney faced a workload management issue - they were unable to effectively monitor and manage their computing resources, and could not easily determine which systems were processing applications, and which were idle. A homegrown batch processing solution developed by Pratt & Whitney in the early 1990’s provided limited control over their computer resources when there were just 100 desktop systems. But this solution did not scale, and as Pratt & Whitney’s reliance on computing resources grew, workload management became increasingly difficult. Resource utilization, overall computing performance, productivity and efficiency were not at optimal levels, and costs were dramatically increasing. This compute-intensive environment demanded a quantum increase in Pratt & Whitney’s compute capacity; and an ability to speed up software builds on their in-house coding projects. Long before their competitors, Pratt & Whitney recognized the need to adopt cluster computing as the basis for managing their enterprise-wide computing environment. They selected Platform Computing as their partner in distributed computing and began a long-term relationship with an initial deployment of Platform LSF - a workload management solution that provides transparent, on demand access to enterprise computing resources. Pratt & Whitney also deployed Platform LSF Make software, which simultaneously dispatches parallel tasks to multiple computing resources, to dramatically reduce the processing time for software builds. Using the LSF and LSF Make solutions, Pratt & Whitney’s design and development teams balanced the workload between available systems to ensure maximum throughput, and ultimately reduced the time it takes to deliver finished products. According to Peter Bradley, Associate Fellow for High Intensity Computing at Pratt & Whitney, the LSF software increased the company’s computing capacity, allowing it to do more computer-aided simulations. With LSF, Pratt & Whitney can effectively manage and control their distributed computing resources, automatically schedule jobs to begin as resources become available, and receive constant, up-to-date information about the state of their computing environment. Following the initial deployment of the LSF software, Pratt & Whitney undertook an aircraft engine compressor project. This project formed the foundation for a new era in cost reductions that are today assumed in Pratt & Whitney’s design process. The increase in productivity achieved using LSF enabled Pratt & Whitney to halve its engineering time and reduce their development costs by more than 50 percent. The reduction in engineering time gave Pratt & Whitney the capacity to execute thousands of additional analysis jobs. As a result, Pratt & Whitney substantially increased the engine’s fuel efficiency, making the company more competitive. “We don’t even talk about these kinds of gains any more. The Platform LSF software made them a part of our business, and we now depend on it,” said Bradley. Today, Pratt & Whitney is recognized as an innovator in distributed computing. While the Platform LSF software manages 5,000 Sun and Dell desktops and 150 servers across its North American operations (2 locations in Canada and 3 in the United States), Pratt & Whitney’s goal is to bring all of its computing resources - more than 15,000 desktop computers and servers - under LSF control. Background: Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies Corporation, a US$26 billion company, is a world leader in the design, manufacture and support of aircraft engines, gas turbines and space propulsion systems. Pratt & Whitney’s aircraft engines power more than half of the world’s commercial fleet and propel the majority of U.S. Air Force fighters at the speed of sound. Its rocket engines send payloads into orbit at 20,000 miles per hour; and its gas turbines provide power on land and propulsion at sea. ---------- Copyright 2002 Platform Computing, Inc. Used by permission.