Calling CAE Users: Take the Altair HPC Cloud Challenge

What engineer buys into something they can’t touch or at least see in action? Not many, according to Altair, which is why it is hosting a challenge designed to give potential customers hands-on exposure to its high-performance computing cloud solution.

The HPC Cloud Challenge, sponsored by Altair in conjunction with partners Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Intel, is all about making cloud HPC resources available to engineers so they can experience first hand the benefits of having near limitless, scalable computing resources to throw at the most onerous CAE problems.

“We want people to experience the advances we’ve made in parallelization and clear up certain myths about the cloud,” said Ravi Kunju, vice president of strategy and business development for Altair.

Altair and its challenge partners are encouraging CAE users to submit project ideas, which will be evaluated by a team of Altair, Intel and AWS representatives, and qualified applicants will be accepted into the challenge. Those who gain entrée will get free access to all the HyperWorks software, computing resources and product support required for their particular application. Participants can choose from among six different configurations of Altair’s HyperWorks Unlimited Virtual Appliance (HWUL), which is a turnkey solution for high performance computing in the cloud that is fully configured and accessible within a browser in minutes.

Contest participants will gain access to HyperWorks Unlimited on the AWS platform. Image Courtesy of Altair

Not only are Altair, AWS and Intel looking for exposure for their HPC cloud solutions, but Altair is looking to clear up some long-standing misconceptions about the cloud as a serious engineering environment, including its processing speed, ability to move large amounts of data and visualizing results in a web browser. “We want to clear up certain myths about the cloud and plant the idea that you can effectively do HPC cycles in the cloud,” Kunju said.

The challenge will also give smaller companies the opportunity to test drive cloud-based HPC resources for their CAE initiatives, Altair said. Often, small- and mid-sized companies are left out of the HPC equation because they think they lack the on-staff resources and expertise to deploy and manage HPC environments, not to mention the budgets to fund large capital expenditures for HPC infrastructure and software.

HyperWorks Unlimited on the AWS platform integrates unlimited use of HyperWorks with PBS Professional, a high-performance computing (HPC) workload manager. There are also application-aware portals for HPC access and the ability to handle remote visualization of Big Data.

Altair is accepting proposals for HPC Cloud Challenge now through Sept. 30, 2015. Entrants can choose an HPC configuration with 32 cores, 128 cores or as many as 256 cores and can request access to the horsepower for as long as 60 days. Kunju said Altair has no intention of turning down candidates for the free trial as long as they submit a worthy abstract and their problem can’t be solved within their own compute infrastructure.

He says interest in the challenge is strong, particularly among customers who are already familiar with HPC or have investments in HPC hardware that is no longer sufficient to meet the requirements of their CAE efforts.

“Engineers need reinforcement from their peers and that is what we are trying to achieve,” Kunju said. “This lets them experience HPC without any cost or capital expenditures, and for those who already have it, it lets them understand the capabilities of the cloud if their current environment is not able to meet demands.”

To hear more about Altair’s Hyperworks Unlimited private cloud solution, check out this video.