“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.” Albert Einstein Today’s workstation can provide you with a magnificent digital canvas to create tomorrow ...... today! With workstations powered by two Intel® Xeon® 5500 series processors, engineers have the opportunity to create, shape, test and modify products before they become real. Engineers can now design, visualize and simulate products from the conceptual design phase through the entire manufacturing process. This is done virtually before any investments are made in a prototype. “Any color—so long as it's black.” Henry Ford Like the automobile, the workstation has morphed into something much more than what it once was. It now has more capabilities and features than its predecessor and, if you allow it to, it can help you accelerate the pace of your innovation. Today’s workstation gives engineers a new tool that can be likened to a digital workbench. This tool is powered by two Intel Xeon 5500 series processors with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology and Intel® Hyper Threading Technology to take advantage of the processor’s power and thermal headroom to enable increased performance of both multi-threaded and single-threaded workloads. Today's workstation can host a suite of software applications from ISV's like Autodesk, SolidWorks, PTC, Bentley and others to create and test their ideas. The pliers, hammer and nails found on a workbench in a garage or basement have now been replaced with digital tools that promise to accelerate innovations via a process known as digital prototyping. Its enablers include application tools like detailed CAD, CAE and PIM. Together they represent the new digital workbench—a powerful innovation tool you can use to bring your ideas forward faster than ever before. “I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years.” Wilbur Wright You think all you need is an entry-level workstation with a single Intel® Xeon® processor. After all, you only do CAD—right? You may be thinking like Wilbur Wright. Innovation in the workplace is paced by how well you can use technology to test and improve your ideas. As you begin to adopt modern workflows you may realize the dramatic impact that simulation-based engineering or digital prototyping can have on your product development cost and schedules. You will soon realize that the cost of the second processor and additional memory necessary to support digital prototyping was far less expensive than the cost of multiple physical prototypes and the associated time to produce them. Instead of investigating hundreds of digital prototypes, you only have time to look at a single physical prototype and ask: What if I …? Those “what ifs” could have been played out on a dual-processor Intel Xeon processor 5500 series-based digital workbench faster, and your time and cost of physical prototypes could have been significantly reduced. Are you ready to adopt modern workflows and accelerate your innovation?
The Server Room Blog
3 Posts tagged with the digital_workbench tag
Often this term is used around the HPC industry referring to the use of HPC to help companies and R&D accelerate the process of innovation. One close to home example that comes to mind, because I own one of his products, is James Dyson, inventor of the Dyson* vacuum cleaners. By all means he is a success story, but the road to success, by his own account, was paved by many failures along the way. According to Dyson, it took him 15 years, nearly his entire savings and 5127 prototypes to develop his creation. Could HPC technology have streamlined his success?
A May 2008 study on the Industrial use of HPC for innovation, sponsored by DARPA, DOE, and Council on Competitiveness, concluded that “HPC-based virtual prototyping and large-scale data modeling provide breakthrough insights that dramatically accelerate and streamline not only ‘upstream’ R&D and engineering, but also ‘downstream’ business processes such as data mining, logistics and custom manufacturing.” And while, “the United States is the largest consumer of HPC…. some U.S. firms are not applying HPC as aggressively as they could.”
Going back of Dyson’s example, granted a decade ago the use of HPC was limited to few industries, the HPC industry has grown dramatically and so the availability, access and affordability of the computing resources that can significantly streamline the time of discovery to accelerate innovation. The availability, affordability and combination of powerful workstations, servers, and software can allow a designer to more quickly and efficiently innovate ideas for form, fit and function. You might want to read this blog on “Why you need a Digital Workbench” by Thor Sewell. And while cost might be mentioned as one of the barriers to HPC adoption, can you afford to persevere for 15 years and risk your savings?, like Dyson did. As of matter of fact, companies are innovating around providing HPC services to the “masses” by lowering the adoption barriers on a “pay-as-you-go-basis.” So while Dyson learned from each of his 5127 so called “failures” over 15 years and nearly his entire savings, HPC technology allows us to accelerate the time from idea to reality process you can more quickly streamline innovation cycle process: from creating, to simulating, to analyzing , to visualizing.
Jimmy