How can our manufacturing sector improve competitiveness through smart use of computing technology? Unsurprisingly, a serious investment in our own understanding of options is a critical step. There are many ways to learn, and the experts would say we should avail ourselves of as many as possible.
Competition is increasingly tech-savvy
Modeling and simulation, using HPC, have grown to become very common to the design process. Physical modeling and testing and, in some cases, have completely replaced physical modeling and testing. Yet, there is much more physical testing out there than computer modeling in all but the largest companies. Thanks to modern compute power, the pace of innovation is now arguably faster than it has ever been. Unsurprisingly, the next wave of change will come even faster. It has already been making inroads in the savviest of organizations.
Competition pushes us to differentiate our products, find ways to reduce time to market, improve quality, lower costs, and derive additional income streams from those products (e.g. support services). This all but necessitates the use of computer-aided engineering (CAE) and simulation technologies. Simulation allows analysts, engineers, and designers to thoroughly test the quality, usability and through-life behavior of new designs before creating costly physical prototypes.
It is not unusual to be told that simulations roughly halve both design time and costs. The improvements in product and costs make HPC an extraordinary advantage. Additionally, knowing how a product behaves over its life enables companies more accurately sell support and services which helps generate additional revenue.
Increasing tech-savviness for us all
The first, most critical step, is for an individual or group within a project or company to see the possibility, benefits, and ultimately the necessity of using HPC. Generally, this means introducing HPC into the design process. This is a daunting task for those who have not actively pursued it before. The latest technologies such as Intel® Xeon Scalable processors and the Intel® Omni-Path Architecture have advancements every year, so keeping up is best done with a little help! Fortunately, there are a number of people with insights eager to help:
- vendors of HPC technologies love to talk about their solutions, so invite them in and listen to their capabilities and success stories “ but seek independent perspectives and validation;
- vendors of application software that use HPC usually speak the language of engineers by offering solutions “ again independent perspectives and validation are important, but one often overlooked resource are the user groups for these software packages (seek them out!);
- independent HPC expertise “ most HPC centers in the DoE National Labs and some academic HPC centers have industry outreach programs (e.g., HPC4Mfg) which can help, and the non-profit specialist HPC consultancy NAG offers their expertise in HPC to novices and experts alike.
Summary
Regardless of your usage of HPC and AI in past years, there is enormous opportunity ahead. Education takes time “ fortunately there are many resources available. We can start now with four things:
- Engage user communities (other engineers!): Find and engage users groups, or software specific conferences where users attend, for software that appears likely to be helpful. Ideally, compare the pros and cons of competing packages. Gain inspiration from others on how to build a competitive advantage from novel use of capabilities that are there waiting to be discovered.
- Engage vendors: don’t be shy “ ask them to educate you. Just know they will sell what they have, so learn from that but apply some skepticism.
- Engage internal stakeholders: Connect HPC and AI expertise for balanced dialogue, connect HPC systems experts and Cloud advocates for intelligent discussions and balanced answers based on workload behaviors.
- Engage independent advice: Network with experts from National Labs, academic HPC centers, and consider specialist HPC consultants (e.g., NAG).
Individuals that adopt these four resolutions will be in a great position to help their company be more competitive. Organizations that adopt these four resolutions top-to-bottom will be in a strong position to beat their competition. Individuals and organizations that do neither will need to hope their competition is ignoring HPC and AI as much as they are!
