Bringing thermal simulation to the cloud

6SigmaET has announced a partnership with cloud computing platform Rescale. Through this partnership, electronics engineers will be able to offload complex CFD (computational fluid dynamics) simulation to cloud-based servers on demand, reducing simulation times without the need for expensive on-site hardware.

With any thermal simulation, significant computing power is required to solve the complex CFD equations used to calculate temperature and airflow. Traditionally, this has required a substantial up-front investment in high performance computing hardware. Through this new partnership, however, it is claimed that 6SigmaET users will gain access to as much as 1400 petaflops of computing power delivered via Rescale’s 30 data centres and over 8million servers. It is said that this facility will cut up-front investment costs and reduce solve times, regardless of the user’s hardware or locations.

“The move to cloud computing seems like the obvious choice for both our product and the wider CFD industry,” said Tom Gregory, product manager at Future Facilities. “Through the Rescale partnership we will be able to offer our customers lower investment costs, faster solve times and, ultimately, more accurate thermal simulation.”

Through the secured Rescale platform web interface, 6SigmaET users will also be able to allocate computing resource on an on-demand model-by-model basis, paying for only the cloud processing power they require. This provides access to a near-unlimited computing resource, allowing electronics engineers to solve up to 300m grid cells in a single simulation.

In addition to 6SigmaET, cloud solving with Rescale will also be rolled out to the company’s sister simulation suite, 6SigmaDCX.