CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

9 September 2013

Product News

Altair Launches Private Cloud Appliance for CAE

Altair today announced the launch of HyperWorks Unlimited™, offering companies a fully configured hardware and software appliance for computer-aided engineering (CAE).

Altair's HyperWorks Unlimited, a state-of-the-art managed private cloud solution, offers unlimited use of all Altair software including HyperWorks® applications and PBS Works™ workload management tools. With HyperWorks Unlimited, users no longer have restricted access to HyperWorks software applications, making high-performance computing (HPC) far more accessible for the CAE community and paving the path to infinite exploration.

"As a global leader in CAE and workload management software, Altair is uniquely positioned with our domain knowledge and software licensing model to lower the barriers of high-performance technical cloud computing," said James R. Scapa, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Altair. "Procuring, managing and maintaining large HPC clusters is a complex and challenging process, especially for small and medium businesses. HyperWorks Unlimited addresses this issue head-on by providing limitless access to our software within a pre-configured, fully supported hardware appliance for cloud-based simulation."

In the past, cloud computing adoption has been severely hampered within the CAE domain for three primary reasons: first, the elastic scalability of application licensing; second, the prohibitive amount of time associated with the mobility of big data from clusters to local machines for effective post-processing and visualization; and third, the perceived data security concern associated with public clouds. HyperWorks Unlimited eliminates all of these issues.

"We have reached an inflection point in product design where hundreds of thousands of mid-sized manufacturers are now looking to be even more competitive by moving beyond traditional computer-aided design environments and into simulation-based design," said Stephen Wheat, General Manager High Performance Computing Group, Intel Corporation. "This requires a tremendous amount of compute power that's easy to deploy, manage and use. Altair's innovative turnkey solution, based on Intel Cluster Ready technology, unites HyperWorks software with powerful compute hardware based on the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 product family, enabling manufacturers to quickly move into simulation-based design."

In addition to being fully optimized for running massively parallel applications such as CFD and FEA solvers, HyperWorks Unlimited also includes Altair's Display Manager, a remote visualization Web-based portal that allows graphically intensive, interactive applications to be accessed on HyperWorks Unlimited, including in networks with challenging latencies. HyperWorks Unlimited is designed and configured to be HPC ready, providing greater accessibility to run pre- and post-processors "out of the box" within the customer's own location, and is completely managed and supported by Altair.

Altair has partnered with SGI as the primary hardware provider for HyperWorks Unlimited, offering full capabilities of compute, networking and storage resources. SGI's legacy in HPC and market leadership in reliable hardware for tackling the demands of technical computing and big data distinguished the company as the partner of choice to enable HyperWorks Unlimited to provide a compelling solution.

"We are excited to be selected as the lead partner for Altair's HyperWorks Unlimited CAE solution. We are convinced Altair's expertise in the CAE and HPC sectors, in combination with our history of providing world class hardware in this domain, will provide an extremely powerful private cloud solution. We are committed to jointly provide incredible value to end customers worldwide by simplifying the implementation of a powerful, in-house HPC system," said Jorge Titinger, President and Chief Executive Officer of SGI.

"Our years of expertise in developing and consuming massively parallel numerical applications, high performing 3D visualization software and efficient workload management software have enabled us to develop an extremely optimized state-of-the-art cloud platform which forms the backbone of HyperWorks Unlimited," said Sam Mahalingam, Senior Vice President of Software Development at Altair. This engineering is unparalleled. The technology stack alleviates all of the cloud adoption issues – Big Data, Access to Resources, Job Management, 3D Visualization, License Mobility, Security and Data Management – by bundling our HyperWorks suite, PBS Professional, Compute Manager, Display Manager, and in the future Simulation Manager and Process Manager. HyperWorks Unlimited is an innovative solution that will rapidly change the way organizations design products."

HyperWorks Unlimited is now available globally. To learn more, sign up today for Altair's cloud solution webinar, Engineering in the Cloud, on September 24, 2013 or visit  www.altair.com/hwul.

Become a member of the CIMdata PLM Community to receive your daily PLM news and much more.

Tell us what you think of the CIMdata Newsletter. Send your feedback.

CIMdata is committed to your privacy. Your personal information will never be sold or shared outside of CIMdata without your express permission.

Subscribe