Ferrari opens dedicated CFD centre

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Oct 14, 2005

Fluent has played a key role in the establishment of a new and revolutionary data centre dedicated to Ferrari's aerodynamic research and development in Maranello, Italy.

Fluent has played a key role in the establishment of a new and revolutionary data centre dedicated to Ferrari's aerodynamic research and development in Maranello, Italy.

This data centre is a clear demonstration of the deployment of an HPC (high performance computing) solution delivered by a partnership between Fluent, American Power Conversion (APC) and AMD, and focused on the high-level performance, stability and reliability required to perform external aerodynamic simulations for Formula One racing.

The Ferrari data centre itself is an integrated supercomputer - based on AMD64 Opteron processors with Direct Connect Architecture - and it is used for CFD simulations using software and services from Fluent.

Its physical infrastructure uses APC's InfraStruXure, with integrated cooling, and it offers power, cooling, management and services in a rack-optimised design, ideal for high-density computing installations.

The APC solution leads to lower power and cooling costs under a unified computing platform.

"We partnered with Scuderia Ferrari to help them deploy an ideal solution for their sophisticated research and development data centre, which houses one of the largest privately owned supercomputers in the world", said Dwight Sperry, APC's Group General Manager, Enterprise Systems and Business Networks.

"While the technology exists to create data centre designs with multiple powerful processors in a clustered environment, IT professionals are dealing with today's challenge to power and cool them - while ensuring high availability as well as the ability to expand for tomorrow's technology".

"InfraStruXure's immediately deployable benefits were clear to Ferrari".

"And since Ferrari also is considering increasing the processing power in the future, InfraStruXure's agility was instrumental as well".

Commenting on the unveiling of the Ferrari HPC, Gerard De Neuville, Fluent Corporate Vice-President said: "Fluent has a long history of success in F1".

"Most of the Formula 1 teams use Fluent's CFD software and the existing relationship between Ferrari's Aerodynamics Department and Fluent stretches back to 1996 when we supplied them with software and services for CFD analysis of their racing cars".

"Their cutting-edge HPC environment represents one of the biggest industrial computing platforms in the world, and will help to drive the optimisation of large scale applications of Fluent".

"Fluent's customers' demand for computational power continues to expand as HPC, with its high capabilities, allows F1 teams to perform extremely large CFD simulations, or to support rapid design analyses".

"No longer the exclusive domain of large centralised automotive and aerospace enterprises, HPC is now equally important to engineers in smaller design groups and in process industries such as power generation, oil and gas, chemicals, and materials processing, and Fluent is strongly committed in these markets as well".

This new HPC installation was a challenge in terms of ventilation and cooling in that the centre is located within the historic site of Enzo Ferrari's early design and development facilities.

This retrofit posed HVAC challenges not seen in more modern buildings.

Antonio Calabrese, Head of Information Systems in Ferrari remarked that: "Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro deploys only best-in-class technologies and products that are proven to meet our challenges".

"Both APC and Fluent have demonstrated the right level of expertise and flexibility needed to fulfil our demands".