GOVERNMENT

In recent years, the model size of automobile design and analysis has become larger and more complex than ever before -- from thousands of model elements in a single automobile design to millions of detailed elements. These influences have driven the need for high performance computing power with faster I/O, faster bandwidth and higher scalability in the automobile industry. To address these industry challenges, Hyundai Motor Company, the number one motor company in Korea, has purchased computing and storage solutions from Silicon Graphics Korea. A subsidiary of Silicon Graphics, Inc., SGI Korea has delivered four SGI Altix servers and an SGI InfiniteStorage solution. These new servers, powered by a total of 148 Intel Itanium 2 processors and running Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system, were installed in November and will be used for full car analysis, engine analysis, drag test and the prediction of airborne noise. By boosting its computing capacity with the four new servers -- a 132-processor SGI Altix 3000 servers and a 16-processor Altix 350 server -- Hyundai Motor Company will be equipped with 888 Gflops computing power, expecting to improve its CAE elapsed time significantly, compared to its previous computing performance. "In a move to reduce costs and improve productivity, the use of CAE analysis, instead of physical test, has greatly increased in the automobile industry. Extreme accuracy is also of concern and a serious requirement. In the old days, the number of model elements in a new car design was just tens of thousands but now it has grown to a couple of million or more detailed elements. SGI Altix is the most appropriate server to solve these large-scale calculations. Based on internal benchmark test results, we selected SGI Altix servers, which provide the combination of SGI high performance shared-memory architecture and Intel Itanium 2 power and affordability," said Hansoo Kang, GM of Engineering System Management Team of Hyundai Motor Company. The SGI Altix server family leverages SGI NUMAflex architecture, which provides the ability for 512 processors to operate under a single system image, to deliver the best system scalability and easily manage large data files and applications. Moreover, the built-in NUMAlink interconnect fabric allows global addressing of all memory in the system and delivers data across computing nodes 200 times faster than conventional Ethernet interconnects. More complex data sets and complete workflows can be driven entirely out of memory, enabling productivity breakthroughs that traditional Linux clusters or repurposed UNIX OS-based servers cannot achieve. This differentiated architecture makes Altix the best CAE server for solving large-scale calculations. "We are especially pleased to work with Hyundai Motor Company, one of the leading automobile companies in the world. Altix was designed with the compute horsepower to solve large scale and complex calculations. Hyundai Motor Company's Altix purchase will enhance and accelerate their new car development process to help them achieve their business objectives," said PS Shim, Area General Manager of SGI Korea. "The CAE technology adoption in a new car development continues to be increased due to its cost effectiveness and environment protection. Also the model size of automobile design and analysis has become larger and more complex than ever before. Given the above business requirement and benchmark test result, Hyundai selected SGI Altix servers based on Intel 64-bit Itanium processor. Intel's 64-bit Itanium 2 processor based on EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction-set Computing) technology is the most appropriate architecture for enterprise applications that require high processing power and large memory capacity. In addition to performance, reliability and availability advantages, the Itanium 2 processor based platform will help enterprise customers to maximize their return on investment with reducing costs," said Myung-Chan, Kim, country manager of Intel Korea. Hyundai Motor Company has set its long-term plan to grow to be the best global automobile company in future. In order to establish its long-term objective, it enhances its R&D investment, including new car development. Hyundai Motor Company has announced Tucson and All-new Sonata in Korea, Tucson in the Unites States, and other enhanced models in China, and India this year. Kang, Sang Min, research of TongYang Securities said, "Hyundai Kia Motor's market share in the United States was less than 1 percent in 1999. It is said to be around 2.5% in 2004, and is expected be around 3% in 2005."