AweSim

Ed. Note: In high performance computing lore, it is said that Apple Computer bought a Cray supercomputer in the late 1980s to help design the company’s next personal computer. When he learned of this, the founder of Cray replied that ironically he was designing his next supercomputer with an Apple computer. Today, computer engineers working for the AweSim initiative are using supercomputers to design all matter of products and processes.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (Dec. 18, 2015) – Our Statewide Users Group meeting(link sends e-mail) has always been an excellent way to meet with our users face-to-face to interact, answer questions and touch on pain points.

It just hasn’t always been that popular.

Is there a word for being simultaneously exhausted and re-invigorated at the same time? If not there should be.

It’s how I feel every year following the annual Supercomputing Conference – the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis – this year aptly named SC15(link sends e-mail).

Forrest Burney isn’t a SimApp salesman, or any kind of salesman actually, but he’d certainly make a good one. Burney is the Engineering Manager of Plastics at BWay Corporation, one of the largest manufacturers of packaging containers for industrial, commercial and retail markets in North America.

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Last week, the sixth annual International Industrial Supercomputing Workshop (IISW) visited the Cleveland Convention Center, which overlooks a picturesque Lake Erie landscape that includes the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Cleveland Browns’ football stadium and the Great Lakes Science Center.

In Denver recently, my Ohio Supercomputer Center colleagues and I participated in SC13, the “International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis,” and we celebrated the event’s 25^th conference. Organizers created a timeline display of the conference over the years, and it was very interesting to see how the conference has grown and evolved with the industry that it represents. I made some mental notes about some of what I saw this year to share with blog readers.

The staff of the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) is heading west again this year (Salt Lake City last year; Denver this year) to attend SC13, the premier international conference for high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis. The staff will have a brand new booth to call "home away from home," and they will be introducing the HPC industry to a brand new industrial engagement initiative.

As noted in this blog just a few weeks ago, the Ohio Supercomputer Center has launched a new program to foster the creation of advanced manufacturing apps to facilitate adoption of modeling and simulation by small and medium-sized businesses. Known as AweSim, the initiative is a collaborative effort of OSC, P&G, Intel, AltaSim Technologies, TotalSim USA, Kinetic Vision and Nimbis Services. I’m very excited about the potential of this new program, but industrial engagement efforts are nothing new to OSC.

Experimental testing is fundamental to most engineering R&D. Over the past decade, large companies have leveraged simulation techniques to help expedite their design and development phase, with the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) being the key tool in fluid based systems. By marrying CFD with traditional physical testing, it is possible to quickly identify and correct weaknesses in a given design and often improve performance above what would have been achievable through rig testing alone.

The Ohio Supercomputer Center is pleased to be celebrating Ohio Manufacturing Month and National Manufacturing Day in a very special way. Earlier this summer, the Ohio Third Frontier Commission awarded a $3 million Innovation Platform Program grant to OSC and our partners for a project to design and deploy easy-to-use advanced manufacturing simulation apps.