Formula 1 Events

Appro to Support Renault’s Drive for Performance in Formula 1 Racing

MILPITAS, Calif., March 4 /PRNewswire/ — Appro (http://www.appro.com),
a leading provider of high-performance enterprise computing systems, today
announced that it has been awarded a contract for a 38TF Appro Xtreme-X(TM)
Supercomputer for the ING Renault F1 Team Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
Centre, a brand new modern technology-driven research facility designed to
place Renault "in the pole position" in Formula 1 competition. This award
marks another milestone for Appro’s supercomputers in international HPC
markets. The Appro Xtreme-X2 Supercomputer will be shipped and installed by
Appro at the Renault F1 CFD Centre in the UK by the end of June, 2008.

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Appro’s supercomputer will provide the ING Renault F1 Team’s CFD Centre
with a five-fold increase in CFD computing capacity with the ability to run
full-car simulations in addition to the aerodynamic testing of components
such as the front and rear wings, turning vanes, brake ducts, fuel tanks
and more. Appro’s Xtreme-X2 meets the capability computing and high
availability requirements needed for the new CFD Centre computational
resources. At current conservative development rates, the expanded facility
will provide 50% of the gains of a fully-efficient mature wind-tunnel for
less than 50% of the investment. With this added computing capacity
provided by Xtreme-X2, the Renault F1 Team will generate a measurable
competitive advantage to further establish the company as a technology
leader in Formula 1 racing. The Supercomputer will also be used to expand
the current computational support for Renault F1’s integration into the
Renault-Nissan group’s research and development efforts. This integration
means a valuable CFD resource will be made available at minimum cost to
other business units for research beyond Formula 1.

"We are extremely pleased to work with ING Renault F1 Team to provide
improved computing capability, better reliability, superior system
performance and an outstanding management system delivered by Appro
Xtreme-X2 Supercomputers"; said Daniel Kim, CEO of Appro. "Appro is excited
to partner with a technology innovator like Renault to achieve the
competitive edge in Formula 1 and beyond."

"Renault is looking forward to the installation of the Appro Xtreme-X2
Supercomputer to enhance our CFD Centre computational resources"; said Bob
Bell, Technical Director of ING Renault F1 Team. "Appro not only offered us
a cost effective solution but they also improved our required technical
specification through better reliability, greater fault tolerance and
redundancy as well as more flexibility with regards to system scalability.

The Xtreme-X2 supercomputer to be delivered to the Renault F1’s CFD
centre is based on Quad-Core AMD Opteron(TM) processor compute nodes. As
configured, the computer has a peak capability of 38TF and is provisioned
and managed as a single unified supercomputing system. The system has 4.4TB
of high performance local memory with a usable aggregate bandwidth of more
than 8Terrabytes/s. Each dual processor node has a peak capability of more
than 70Gigaflops. The compute nodes in the system are interconnected by a
dual-rail double data rate Infiniband interconnect fabric that provides
reduced inter-processor latency and improved system reliability.

The system comes pre-configured with the Appro Management System that
supports a dual-rail Infiniband network as a load balanced fault-tolerant
interconnect and allows the use of shared receive queues with multi-channel
operation. The software is designed to maximize the bandwidth associated
with MPI processes and to support non-stop operation for mission critical
operations. The system is supported by large memory and visualization nodes
equipped with dual Graphic Processing Units (GPU) to allow large panel
displays to show simulation results. The system also includes a global
parallel file system that is bridged directly to the Infiniband fabric
allowing high bandwidth parallel access to the file system from all of the
compute nodes. In addition, separate from the supercomputers, Appro will
deliver multiple XtremeWorkstations based on Quad-Core AMD Opteron(TM)
processors to ING Renault F1 Team with an impressive amount of memory and
GPU performance.

The Appro Xtreme-X2 supercomputer is managed by the Appro Cluster
Engine (ACE) management software providing a complete, remote lights-out
management solution for the entire system including the interconnect
networks, servers, clusters, resource management and scheduling. It also
supports diskless operation with standard Linux distributions and fast boot
operations independent of the system size. ACE also supports network load
balancing and failover. ACE provides a total management capability for
maximum performance and non-stop operation.

IDC projects that the CAE/CFD market segment alone will more than
double in this decade to reach nearly $2 billion in 2010," said Steve
Conway, IDC research vice president, technical computing. "The ING Renault
F1 Team contract shows that Appro can win HPC procurements with a demanding
mix of requirements, in this case including dual-rail DDR interconnect
capability and heterogeneous processing that combines x86 and streaming GPU
modes."

"The intense computational demands of the ING Renault F1 Team are best
addressed by innovative HPC solutions that can deliver enhanced performance
while keeping power costs low," said Patrick Patla, Director of Product
Management, Server/Workstation Division, AMD (NYSE: AMD). "The combination
of AMD’s revolutionary Direct Connect Architecture which provides
outstanding system-level performance, and industry-leading features such as
AMD’s innovative power management capabilities and the new AMD Wide
Floating Point Accelerator, a 128-bit floating point unit for increased
floating-point performance, all combine to make native Quad-Core AMD
Opteron processors an ideal computing solution for Renault’s
compute-intensive CFD Centre."

About Appro

Appro is a leading developer of innovative workstations,
density-managed servers, clusters and supercomputers. Appro is uniquely
positioned to support High-Performance Computing markets focusing on medium
to large-scale deployments where lowest total cost of ownership is a
primary consideration. Appro accelerates technical applications and
business results unlocking the value of IT through outstanding
price/performance, balanced architecture, open standards and engineering
expertise. Appro headquarters is in Milpitas, CA, with an R&D/manufacturing
center in Asia and a sales and service office in Houston, TX. To learn more
go to http://www.appro.com

About Renault

The ING Renault F1 Team was born in 2002 with a singular purpose:
winning the FIA Formula One World Championship with a 100% Renault car.
Drawing on a heritage of motorsport innovation that stretches back to
Renault’s first Formula 1 race in 1977, and includes six world
constructors’ championships during the 1990s when Renault supplied V10
engines to front-running F1 competitors, the team steadily grew in
competitiveness since 2002 thanks to a blend of performance, reliability
and technology reinforced by the engineering expertise of the Renault
Group. The team reached the pinnacle of performance during the 2005 and
2006 seasons, winning the drivers’ and constructors’ championships in both
seasons in an historic double-double achievement. After such highs, 2007
proved to be a difficult year, but the resolve remains strong for 2008.
With renewed optimism, an exciting driver line-up and innovative technical
package, the team approaches the new season determined to bounce back and
ready to fight at the front of the field.

AMD, AMD Opteron and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced
Micro Devices, Inc.

 

SOURCE Appro