The High Performance Computing Division of MSC.Software

Dr. Stefan Mayer

Business Manager

HPC Solutions Center Europe

Update MSC.Software

• MSC has been recognized as „Nastran company“ for decades

• Built extensive service offerings during the past years– Engineering Services– Process Design and

Automation– Simulation Data

Management– Trainings – IT Services

• 1999 new engineering.e-com division: www.engineering-e.com

Update MSC.Software

• 2000 new MSC.Linux division• 2001 acquisition of AES, leading provider

of systems, software and services in the area of PLM in North America

• MSC.Software today offers all components of „simulation solutions“ – software, systems and services

• MSC.Linux Division extended to High Performance Computing Division– Offer Unix know-how to customers as well– Simulation offerings extended to life sciences

Update MSC.Software

• HPC Division headquartered in Santa Ana, Calif.; HPC Solutions Center in Munich

MSC.Software‘s IT Offerings

Software Systems Services

General Purpose Simulation

Simulation Data Management

Design & Manufacturing CATIA

Product Data Mgmt. ENOVIA & SmartTeam

High Performance Computing (Linux/Unix)

Work Group Computing (Unix, Linux, NT)

Enterprise Computing

Infrastructure (Storage, Network)

Integrations Services

Product Support & Services

Engineering & Design Services

Process & IT Consulting & Services

Education & Training Services

MSC.Software‘s HPC Strategy

• Linux (32 and 64 bit) and Unix (incl. SMP servers)• Clusters and single machines• Complete solution – hardware, operating system,

middleware, application, IT services from a single provider – MSC.Software

• Hardware partners• Leverage MSC.Software‘s reputation in Linux and

Unix solutions• MSC.Linux is preferred Linux for technical HPC of

several hardware and software partners

MSC.Linux• Why MSC.Software and Linux?

– Fill gap “Technical High Performance Computing Using Linux”

– MSC.Software has detailed know-how in all components, which are required for a complete solution• Hardware• Operating System• Middleware• Applications• IT Services (incl. support and training)

– Reliable partner since 1963, no start-up– Close cooperation with Intel, all major hardware vendors

and many software partners for many years

MSC provides integrated, customized solutions for technical High Performance Computing using Linux

MSC.Linux Operating System

• Goal: best suited out-of-the-box distribution for technical High Performance Computing for Intel architectures

• Supports Files > 2GB, browser based installation and administration, 2.34 GB memory for MSC.Nastran using Linux (<900 MB for all other distributions), etc.

• LSB compatible

• Development strongly driven by requirements from projects for customers

• Current release is MSC.Linux 2001 August (2.4 Kernel, FireGL2, NFS V3, XFS, RAID-1 with XFS, etc.), IA-64 in April

• MSC.Linux is particularly well suited for Linux clusters

• MSC.Linux mainly intended for configuration of turnkey hardware/software solutions

IPF (IA-64) Activities

• All MSC.Software applications will be ported to IPF (IA-64)• Results for MSC.Nastran 2001 standard benchmark XL0TDF1

• MSC.Linux will support IA-64 starting from April• Further boost expected with McKinley

• Differentiators of high-end UNIX/Linux SMP systems, incl. IA-64, compared to IA-32 Linux– >>2GB per analysis job– >>1 processors in one system

High-end Unix/Linux SMP

  

Typical HPC Architecture

Compute Nodes Application 3Compute Nodes Application 3Compute Nodes Application 1Compute Nodes Application 1

Compute Nodes Application 4Compute Nodes Application 4Compute Nodes Application 2Compute Nodes Application 2

MSC.Linux / Unix Head Node

and/or Management

Node(s)

MSC.Linux / Unix Head Node

and/or Management

Node(s)

Interconnection NetworkInterconnection Network

LANLAN

IT Services

• System design• Implementation

– Hardware set-up, for example rack integration

– Installation, configuration, test of hardware, operating system, middleware, application software (incl. reselling of HW vendor services)

– Installation, configuration and test of image server

– Installation, configuration and test of monitoring and alerting (clusters)

– Installation, configuration and test of queuing system

IT Services

• MSC.Batch Submit (for Linux clusters): Web portal to submit and monitor jobs– Platform independent– Based on LAMP architecture (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP)– Can be extended and customized according to

requirements of customers

IT Services

• Web tools to manage LSF• Computation services: benchmarks,

production runs of customer jobs• (On-site) Training• High Performance Computing (HPC)

consulting• MSC.Linux support• Dedicated support e-mail address, for

example product.support.customer@mscsoftware.com

• Remote access (support, operation)• Hardware maintenance contracts

HPC Solutions• Continued optimization of the interoperation of

hardware-operating system-application yields excellent results– Example: MSC.Nastran running under Linux

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HPC Solutions

• MSC HPC solutions not „only“ for MSC.Nastran, not „only“ for Linux

– LS-DYNA: see www.feainformation.com

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2001 Successes

• Approx. 30 new customers• Customers turn to MSC.Software because of our application,

HPC and OS know-how (Linux and Unix) • Focus on Linux (clusters) and mixed Unix/Linux environments• Reference customers available, for example European car

manufacturer and research institute