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Cloud HPC Simulation Enables Boom’s Supersonic Passenger Jet to Take Off
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
Applicable Industries
- Aerospace
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Digital Twin
- Predictive Quality Analytics
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
The Challenge
Boom Supersonic, an aerospace startup, is designing a supersonic passenger jet that will revolutionize business travel. However, creating a technological breakthrough in the aerospace sector traditionally requires billions of dollars in R&D, a large engineering staff, extensive wind tunnel testing, and many years of development. Advanced fluid-flow and mechanical stress simulation tools have reduced physical testing requirements and costs, but they require costly dedicated high performance computing (HPC) resources to be effective. As a small startup with limited funding but outsized dreams, Boom turned to the public cloud because the upfront costs of building their own on-premise HPC cluster were cost-prohibitive.
About The Customer
Boom Supersonic is an aerospace startup that is redefining passenger air travel. They are designing a supersonic passenger jet that will take business travelers from San Francisco to Tokyo in 5.5 hours, revolutionizing business travel and revitalizing a long stagnant industry. Only a few years old, they are already backed by significant funding and have secured over 75 advance orders from airlines around the world. Boom’s innovation comes more than 40 years after the introduction of the Concorde, an engineering marvel but an economic disappointment. Many years later, using cutting-edge simulation combined with cloud technology, Boom is setting out to accomplish what Concorde could not: a sustainable business model.
The Solution
Boom has run all their simulations on Rescale’s enterprise big compute platform since day one. Rescale offers Boom virtually unlimited compute capacity, while allowing them to bypass investment in internal IT capability—both incredibly valuable to an early stage startup with limited funding. Rescale provides a turnkey interface between advanced engineering software and HPC hardware in the public cloud, allowing Boom to focus on their core engineering competency without distraction from IT management tasks. In addition to allowing Boom to forego in-house IT, Rescale further vastly simplifies IT management with the ScaleX Enterprise administration portal, which allows Boom to manage costs with budgets for projects and teams, manage teams with custom permissions for hardware and software, and manage security with features such as multi-factor authentication and single sign-on.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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