GM says its new computer is super - - - By Paul A. Eisenstein - - Source: The Car Connection

General Motors will turn to IBM for the most powerful supercomputer ever used in the auto industry, a system which will "let us take months out of our development cycle," said Bob Kruse, GM's director of vehicle integration for North America, and "let us get the right product to the right niche of the market faster."

The new supercomputer, developed specifically for GM, is an IBM p655. It is, in a sense, a network of high-speed computers, made up of about 2000 separate IBM POWER4 and POWER5 processors and 145 individual servers. That means it can, in effect, serve a large number of clients and functions simultaneously. But when all those pieces are tied together, the new p655 will be more than twice as fast as the system it replaces, and "puts us on the scale of (computing power) being attained in the national laboratories," according to Bill Pulleybank, IBM director, Deep Computing Institute.

Government facilities, like Sandia and Los Alamos, use their incredible computing power to design nuclear weapons or predict weather patterns. GM will use its new digital system to push forward with its High-Performance Computing Initiative, which has already yielded a 40 percent improvement in engineering productivity. Before the switch to computer-aided design and engineering, it would typically take as much as five years to develop a new vehicle. The all-new Kappa platform, along with the new Pontiac Solstice roadster, required just 27 months. And some GM programs are down to 15 months, and, added Kruse, "we have objectives to cut that" more.

In computing terms, the p655 has a speed of 9 teraflops, (9 billion floating point calculations per second), which one IBM executive likened to conducting one calculation a second on a hand calculator for 285,000 years. More relevant to GM, the company will now be able to use the system to conduct complete vehicle crash simulations that used to take three days overnight, said Tom Tecco, GM's global director of computer-aided technology. The carmaker's goal for the p655 and its other hardware is to move as much design and engineering work as possible into this virtual world. It eliminated an entire phase in the development of Kappa. And it is already has eliminated about 85 percent of the crash tests requiring test vehicles, Kruse pointed out. "At a cost of $500,000 a vehicle, that's a substantial savings."

The giant automaker will roll out 29 new vehicles this year, about one every 22 days. Simply coming up with the resources to crash test so many vehicless would be impossible without the help of a supercomputer, never mind all the additional regulatory issues facing a manufacturer like General Motors, Kruse stressed. Going forward, GM believes that supercomputing is the only way it will be able to meet the needs of a fragmenting motor vehicle market.

 

This is a perfect example of what I mean when I refer to the vast GM and Ford resources that others dont have...

 

Sounds interesting.

 

sounds good but when does that translate into better products worth purchasing????

 

Amazing just how far GM's reach is, and how deep it's pockets are.

 

Soon.

 

Exactly.

 

I dunno, think GM's real problem is its designers. Sure they can engineer a car, but if it doesn't look great inside and out then its wasted effort in a very competitive market.

 

Why did you not see a huge different in design with the Solstice and the Curve? Even that department is changing.

 

Great! I may be able to see the new system firsthand! I work with GM doing internal audit and am hoping to review the core development process later this year!

 

My thought exactly. GM's finally doing more than just trying to fool the consumer with slightly different skin. With the Kappa platform, they can add to the wheelbase of chop it even smaller. and the everything that is tounched and see by the consumer are different, a la Solstice and Curve. Look a the 9-3 and Malibu. No on is drawing comparisons between the cars, but they share the same platform. I think GM maybe getting there stuff together (finally).

 

I would agree if they hadn't just released the new Malibu, Grand prix, those multiple minivan things which are all the same, the ion, the cobalt can pass but wouldn't be my first choice, etc. They have released too much recent ugly for me to be optimistic yet about their future even though the g6 and kappa cars are heading in the right direction.

 

True but those were mostly vehicles that were confirmed before the decision for a new direction for the non-truck department was made. Stay tuned. Lots more to come.