Engineering Problems That You Can Overcome With Cloud High Performance Computing
New product engineering offers a set of challenges, which are often even more complex for technologically advanced products like autonomous vehicles or fusion reactors. One of the best ways to address these difficulties is through high-performance computing (HPC). Compared to traditional on-premises HPC, cloud HPC gives engineers increased access to computing resources without needing to install and maintain physical infrastructure. This enables more engineers who may not have previously had HPC access to get started solving large problems faster and without complexity.
The power of HPC in general lies in its ability to solve a variety of engineering, science, and research problems head-on by aggregating data from many sources across large clusters of interconnected computers. Cloud HPC, in particular, allows teams of engineers to collaborate and share data in real-time where previously traditional HPC projects were siloed within organizations.
Let’s explore some of the engineering problems that you can overcome with the help of cloud HPC.
Promoting Green Engineering and Clean Technologies
One of the most important challenges that engineers face today is finding ways to reduce the environmental impact across major industries. This includes finding ways to improve sustainability, reduce waste, and decrease emissions and existing greenhouse cases. Sustainable and clean technology. Green engineering is a growing engineering focus that seeks to address these challenges. HPC can play a major role in this effort by helping engineers develop more efficient designs and better understand the complex interactions between various systems, all without building physical prototypes and consuming raw materials.
For example, consider the problem of designing a new energy turbine or storage device. A traditional design process would involve creating several prototypes, testing them, making adjustments, and repeating until results are satisfactory. With HPC, however, engineers can run simulations that test dozens or even hundreds of different design permutations in a matter of minutes or hours. This allows them to quickly find the best design for a given situation and avoid costly trial-and-error experimentation.
To further enable the next generation of clean tech innovation, disruptive startups and new ventures are more empowered with cloud HPC. By removing the upfront cost and complexity issues, emerging projects can be carried out with better efficiency to compete with established, less sustainable technologies. Cloud HPC has already shown promise for accelerating breakthroughs in cleaner and more efficient technologies for transportation, energy, manufacturing, and space exploration.
Anticipating and Responding to Climate Change
As the world’s climate changes, engineers are increasingly called upon to develop solutions to some of the most complex problems imaginable. Cloud HPC can help here by providing a platform for detailed analysis and the ability to provide efficient solutions.
For example, consider the problem of designing a city that can survive in a climate-changed world. With HPC, engineers can run simulations that take into account a wide range of factors including changing weather patterns, altered water availability, and shifting populations. This allows them to create plans that are both realistic and adaptable to future changes.
Developing or underdeveloped countries often lack the resources to address these types of challenges on their own. HPC can bridge this gap by providing them with the same level of analysis and planning that more affluent countries can afford.
Improving Energy Efficiency
Engineers play a key role in the development of new, more efficient energy systems. These include everything from improving oil & gas extraction to accelerating renewable energy solutions like wind, solar, hydrogen, nuclear, fusion, and battery storage. Ensuring future generations have access to cleaner, more reliable and more affordable energy is one of the most critical challenges we face on earth.
The world’s energy production and consumption needs will only increase in the years ahead. Cloud HPC will be essential in helping us meet those needs without damaging our environment and reducing our carbon footprint. Cloud HPC has already significantly impacted energy research and development, helping scientists create new cost-effective and environmentally friendly approaches.
Increasing Agricultural Productivity
Cloud HPC can be used to solve problems in agriculture as well. The world’s population is growing rapidly, increasing pressure on our food supply. Cloud HPC can help us meet the challenge of food shortages by providing a platform for detailed analysis of the Agricultural industry. As an example, Cloud HPC can help us develop new strategies for increasing crop yields while using fewer resources.
Engineering Innovation for Aviation and Aerospace and Industries
The aviation and aerospace industries are some of the most exciting and challenging in engineering- they are also some of the most computation hungry industries. Cloud HPC is essential to their success, providing the computational power needed to design and test everything from supersonic aircrafts to the spacecrafts that will take us to Mars.
Cloud HPC has helped usher in the next generation of innovation happening among small but fast-growing companies changing the face of Aerospace. In past decades air and space-faring vehicle development were monopolized by large and/or state-owned organizations. Cloud HPC has unleashed bright minds to design safer and more efficient vehicles in a fraction of the time.
Manufacturing Process Optimization
Cloud HPC is one of the best solutions to stay ahead of the competition in the Manufacturing sector. The manufacturing industry is constantly evolving, with new technologies and techniques invented on a daily basis. HPC can be used to test these new ideas quickly and efficiently, helping manufacturers choose the best ones for their business model.
Cloud HPC also enables manufacturers to produce goods more efficiently than ever by optimizing the products and supply chains. From consumer package goods (CPG) to electronics, companies can now build digital twins of their factories and equipment to predict failure rates to ensure better quality products and increase business continuity. This allows them to remain competitive against other companies that use HPC as well as those that don’t.
Improving Semiconductor Design
Semiconductors are the small processor chips that power our computers, phones, cars, and just about everything else electronic. Cloud HPC helps provide the computational power needed to design and validate these chips accurately, cost-effectively, and quickly. It would be impossible to keep up with the ever-growing demand for semiconductors without the scalability of cloud HPC.
As the need for smaller and faster chips increases, engineers’ ability to keep producing chips that follow Moore’s Law is diminishing. To overcome this, the semiconductor industry is relying on specialized chip designs and AI/ML techniques to drive new chips with continuous performance improvement. Cloud HPC enables start ups and “fabless” chip companies to get started designing chips with the same advanced techniques as their established (and much larger) competitors. This democratized access to high performance computing will help promote novel solutions for our increasing dependence on electronics for internet of things (IOT), connected vehicles, smart home devices, and more.
Chemical Engineering
The chemical engineering industry is responsible for many critical products we use every day Cloud HPC plays a significant role in helping engineers conduct simulations and optimizations that enable them to design safer and more efficient chemicals for manufacturing purposes such as plastics to industrial lubricants. Without the ability to test chemical reactions before producing them, it would be much more challenging (and potentially dangerous!) to ensure that each product meet or exceeds safety standards, while also ensuring that it can be produced quickly and cost-effectively.
Drug Discovery and Pharmaceuticals
Life science companies are challenged to develop new drugs, treatments, and medical devices for new diseases and an aging population. With a virtually unlimited number of biological factors to solve for, it’s no surprise that drug development can often span several years to decades. Additionally, the modern medical records keeping, medical data and knowledge is estimated to double every 73 days (and growing).
With the advent of cloud computing, researchers and scientists are able to make new discoveries faster than ever leading to better patient outcomes. Cloud HPC means that they can work with larger data sets, collaborate more efficiently, and scale up parallel simulation of millions of chemical formulations or device designs to find the optimal candidates faster. Simultaneously we are seeing advancements in the study of human genomics which means doctors can have a better understanding of individual biological factors that can be identified for personalized treatments.
Smarter Urban Development and Construction
Today’s critical infrastructure are challenged to support growing cities and populations. Cloud HPC can help engineer safer and more efficient cities by providing a platform for running analysis and testing new developments. For example, cloud HPC can be used to run simulations that model the impact of building skyscrapers, bridges, residential communities and other structures on everything from traffic patterns to greenhouse gas emissions and more. Architects and construction companies can also use cloud HPC to create and test building models before construction begins. This can help avoid costly mistakes and delays. Cities and infrastructure of the future will combine new designs and technologies with environmental impact mitigation to create a better living environment for all.
Public Transportation Planning
Cloud HPC allows transportation engineers to accurately model different public transit options and make informed decisions on where to invest their time and money. This creates efficiencies and ultimately allows us to travel more efficiently.
In Conclusion
In summary, Cloud HPC has the flexibility to be used in a wide variety of applications that will improve our quality of life, from healing our bodies faster to redesigning more efficient cities.
There are many other engineering challenges that HPC can help you overcome. The examples given here only scratch the surface. Whatever your particular needs may be, HPC has the power to help you meet them. Cloud HPC is a game changer for scientists, engineers, and researchers to access powerful software and hardware that can be accessed on-demand to solve some of the most challenging problems we face on our planet and beyond!
