PBS Professional at Chrysler: Efficient Management of 250,000 Simulations Annually

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Chrysler, a renowned automotive company, was facing a challenge in managing its growing Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) server farm. Since the 1980s, Chrysler has been using computer simulation tools for designing cars and trucks. Over the years, the use of computer-aided engineering and finite element analysis expanded, leading to a significant increase in the processor count at Chrysler’s High-Performance Computing (HPC) center. By the late 1990s, Chrysler was building up its HPC capacity to meet the growing demand for CAE simulations by installing a number of servers. Initially, Chrysler used a competitor's product for workload management. However, in 2003, they acquired 384 PBS Professional licenses to manage clusters used exclusively for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) jobs. By 2008, the HPC center was operating 10 servers from a mix of vendors using a variety of Intel and AMD chips running Red Hat or SUSE Linux. The core count on the server farm had increased to 1,544.

Chrysler is a leading automotive company that has been using computer simulation tools since the 1980s for designing cars and trucks. Over the years, the use of computer-aided engineering and finite element analysis has become a crucial enabler for Chrysler designers. The company has a High-Performance Computing (HPC) center with a processor count of 1,544-cores, all managed by PBS Professional. Chrysler runs a variety of simulations including impact simulations, noise, vibration, and harshness studies, and computational fluid dynamics using a variety of commercial packages. The HPC operation is central to the engineering design process as CAE is involved at every stage. The company has 300 CAE engineers worldwide who feed jobs to the HPC resources through PBS Professional.

Chrysler decided to move entirely to PBS Works, a strategic decision based partly on cost. Chrysler uses Altair HyperWorks tools for CAE, which run on their HPC systems. Altair’s licensing structure enabled Chrysler to leverage HyperWorks licenses and substantially reduce license costs for workload management software. Running all 1,544 cores on PBS Professional also produced an unforeseen benefit. The 384 cores originally managed by PBS Professional and dedicated to CFD applications did not share any workload with the rest of the server population. Chrysler runs impact simulations using the LS-DYNA solver; noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) studies in NASTRAN and Abaqus; and CFD in a variety of commercial packages. The HPC operation is the heartbeat of engineering design because CAE is involved at every stage. Three hundred Chrysler CAE engineers, scattered around the world, feed jobs to the HPC resources through PBS Professional using a homegrown script interface.

• The transition to PBS Professional not only resulted in cost savings but also improved server utilization. The 384 cores originally managed by PBS Professional and dedicated to CFD applications were able to share the workload with the rest of the server population, leading to better resource allocation. Furthermore, the transition was smooth, with service levels maintained throughout the process. The company was able to meet customer expectations while achieving a significant cost advantage. Now that Chrysler has standardized on PBS Professional, they intend to keep it as a strategic scheduling tool going forward as HPC technology continues to evolve.

• Managed to maintain service levels while switching to PBS Professional in about 12 weeks.
• Achieved a sizeable cost advantage by leveraging Altair HyperWorks licenses and reducing license costs for workload management software.
• Increased server utilization by running all 1,544 cores on PBS Professional.