Sticking to your strengths is a recurring theme of modern business. More elegantly described as focusing on core activities, it’s increasingly relevant to the design engineering community. 

Here, the importance of simulating early and often continues to gain traction. So does the value of a multi-physics approach, embracing all elements and levels of system design. The goal, of course, is to reach better outcomes faster. But with the scope of simulation getting broader and deeper, and development cycles being squeezed, access to high-performance computing (HPC) is becoming critical. That represents another significant challenge.  

It’s not easy to build and support an HPC infrastructure. Larger organizations will generally have the necessary IT resources and specialist skillsets in-house. But for smaller companies, it’s likely to be a different story. Typically, managing HPC can be an unwelcome diversion from what really adds value. 

Altair® Unlimited™ is designed specifically to offer these enterprises effortless provision of multi-physics simulation and the HPC resources that will ensure designers get the best from it. In a nutshell, it’s ‘HPC in a box.’ Altair Unlimited offers a combination of world-class HPC and unlimited licenses for Altair HyperWorks™, backed by Altair PBS Works™, our workload management toolkit, via a fully managed physical or virtual appliance.

The business model couldn’t be more straightforward. Altair carefully selects and configures the hardware to ensure that it optimally runs engineering workloads and is readily scalable. There’s no need to worry about specifying servers and processors, Linux system administration, writing shell scripts, maintaining equipment or working out whether there are enough licenses to go around. Capital investment and unpredictable running costs are replaced by a single, transparent operating budget. 

Our partnerships with Dell Technologies and Intel ensure Altair Unlimited is built around industry-leading Dell EMC PowerEdge servers and Inte^l® Xeon^® Scalable processors with an unrivalled track record. These relationships run deep, with both Dell and Intel recognizing Altair’s appliance as a unique approach to simplifying HPC. Indeed, Dell recently enabled its U.S. sales teams to sell Altair Unlimited.

Numerous organizations are realizing the benefits. Take Royal Enfield, a motorcycle brand that dates back to 1901. The company uses Altair Unlimited to accelerate product development. Up and running in just a couple of days, simulation run times are now 15 times faster, and the number of prototypes needed has been cut by 25 percent.

Clients can also rely on the fact that HPC and simulation are what we do. So, we don’t have to source them externally, and we’re experts in bringing them together. If a user has a question, we’re the best people to answer it. One-stop support is all part of the package. 

Ultimately, engineers are interested in designing, not being IT administrators. Altair Unlimited offers engineers a simple portal that enables them to submit, monitor, steer, fix, and rerun their jobs. And they can do that just as easily from a laptop at home as a workstation in the office. Moreover, if they need to use third party simulation tools, Altair Unlimited accommodates that too.  

Successful design engineering is already hard enough. For development teams, access to HPC and a comprehensive array of multi-physics software should be part of the solution, not the problem. To learn more, register for "A Contemporary Perspective of Digital Manufacturing Trends featuring Royal Enfield Motorcycles, Altair and Dell," held on April 21.