Astrobotic, HP, and NVIDIA on GPU-Accelerated Simulation with Maximus
Astrobotic, a Pittsburgh-based space robotic technology developer, is currently one of the teams competing for the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize. To win, Astrobotic and roughly 20 other teams are racing against one another — and against time — to be the first “to safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, have that robot travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send video, images and data back to the Earth,” as the rules specify.
Since Astrobotic relies on software driven simulation, conducted primarily in ANSYS and MathWorks MATLAB, the company can improve its odds in the competition by speeding up its simulation workflow. But Astrobotic came up against the “dead node” issue — workstations that became unavailable for other uses because their resources were fully consumed in simulation computing. Continue reading
Rescale: Build Your Own Simulation Template in the Cloud
On a bright sunny Friday, I ventured out to San Francisco’s South of Market District (SOMA), to locate the office of Rescale in the cluster of start-ups that dot the neighborhood. Somewhere between GreenCitizen Inc. and Kate O’Briens Irish pub, I found the buzzer to Rescale’s door.
Sunny Manivannan, Rescale’s VP of business development, popped his head out to identify the entrance. (I had already overshot the floor and was half way up another flight.) “The floor labeling system isn’t the best here,” he said. Continue reading
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Dell Gets Ready to Go Private: What Does it Mean for Professional Workstation Users?
The PC market is dominated by just a handful of major players. It’s literally a single hand, as five brands — Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, and ASUS — account for 58.9% market share (“Gartner and IDC: PC shipments tumbled…,” October 10, 2012, engadget). The rest is made up by specialty brands. Naturally, in such a tight market, a major strategy shift by one of the Big Five is bound to produce ripple effects.
Last week, publicly traded Dell began taking steps to go private — an option the company’s founder, chairman, and CEO Michael Dell described as “an exciting new chapter for Dell” in a press release. According to the company, Dell has “signed a definitive merger agreement under which Michael Dell, … in partnership with global technology investment firm Silver Lake, will acquire Dell” in a $24.4 billion transaction. Continue reading
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A Sneak Peek of GTC at SolidWorks World 2013
NVIDIA’s annual GPU Technology Conference (March 18-21, San Jose, California) is still a good six weeks away, but if you’re in Orlando, Florida, for SolidWorks World 2013 (Jan 20-23, Disney World Swan & Dolphin Hotel), you could catch a glimpse of GPU’s future in the partner pavilion. The graphics chip maker occupies a corner in Dell’s booth, where it’s showcasing a variety of workstations with its dual-GPU Maximus architecture. Continue reading
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Autodesk Snatches Up HSMWorks, Paves the Way for Cloud-Powered CAM
HSMWorks has already done the legwork to bring CAM to private cloud; with Autodesk‘s acquisition of the company’s assets this morning, the product now appears to be heading for the public cloud.
After buying HSMWorks assets for an undisclosed sum, Autodesk plans to “integrate the HSMWorks technology with its industry leading software and cloud services for manufacturing,” according to the announcement. It will continue to “make current HSMWorks products available for purchase and HSMXpress available as a free download.” Continue reading
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