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Workflow Management for R&D at The Boeing Company with PBS Professional
Technology Category
- Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
Applicable Industries
- Aerospace
- Semiconductors
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Inventory Management
- Smart Campus
Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
The Boeing Information Technology group, based in Bellevue, Washington, provides a wide range of computing services to the entire corporation. The Data Center, which houses the high-performance computing (HPC) systems, is the core of this campus. These HPC systems are accessed by all Boeing engineering departments, with the highest demand coming from engineers running aerodynamics and structural models, especially during the early stages of aircraft design. The HPC resources are primarily used for engineering studies and alterations to existing designs. The challenge was to find a reliable workload manager that could handle Boeing's distinct clusters and optimize several resources under one queue.
About The Customer
The Boeing Information Technology group is based in Bellevue, Washington and provides a wide range of computing services to the entire corporation. The heartbeat of this campus is the Data Center, which houses the high-performance computing (HPC) systems that are accessed by all Boeing engineering departments to run engineering simulations and analyses. The HPC systems are primarily used for engineering studies and alterations to existing designs, such as stretched fuselages and additional seats. They are currently being used intensively for early new product development on the Boeing 787. The servers are accessed by Boeing engineers in Philadelphia and other sites around the world.
The Solution
Boeing implemented Altair's PBS Professional for workload management on three HPC systems: a 64 MSP Cray X1, a 384-CPU SGI Origin 3800 server, and five clusters purchased from Linux Networx. The PBS Professional’s Peer Scheduling feature enables Boeing to balance workload evenly across the clusters. This peer-to-peer scheduling allows PBS Professional to optimize several resources under one queue where users submit jobs. Additionally, Boeing reported dramatic performance benefits with PBS Professional’s support of CPU Sets on their SGI Origin. With PBS Professional running on both the SGI and Cray platforms, it was a logical step for Boeing to implement it on their Linux Networx clusters.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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