Accelerating the selection of “cores” for innovative design in manufacturing

Many engineers on the front line are still at the stage of using PCs with high-end graphics cards. Some engineers in small and medium-sized enterprises who have begun to dabble in workstations have chosen to "assemble" workstations. Some engineers have also directly chosen professional brand workstations. For engineers currently engaged in design work, there are several areas that require super computing power, including: large assemblies and their engineering drawings faced by structural engineers, CAE, and rendering faced by industrial designers. In these jobs, if the computing power of the hardware is not enough, some CAE work sometimes takes several days and nights to get the results, and because the system is not stable enough, sometimes the rendering work will be abandoned due to downtime. With the shortening of design cycles and the improvement of design quality requirements, from appearance design to detailed design, from detailed design to scheme verification and simulation analysis, many companies have adopted a "compression" approach to integrate the design process based on the division of labor within the design team. Traditionally, graphics workstations serve more in the appearance design and detailed design stages, and this stage emphasizes the graphics performance of the workstation. After the process integration, the workstation will undertake part of the scheme verification and simulation analysis work, and this stage emphasizes the overall computing power of the system. Traditional graphics workstations must "go beyond" graphics to achieve expanded functionality and performance.

Three levels of workstations

What kind of work should be done on what kind of workstation? Maybe everyone has their own ideas. Recently, the reporter interviewed Mr. Anthony Neal-Graves, General Manager of Workstations of Intel Data Center Division. In his definition, Intel divides the workstations it supports into three levels, namely entry-level workstations, basic workstations and expert workstations. Among them, entry-level workstations will adopt Sandy Bridge technology in early 2011. This new processor microarchitecture integrates GPU into CPU chip and becomes an indispensable "part" of its body. When users buy such CPU, they also have a "graphics card" with mainstream performance. The graphics card exists in the computer in the form of a "card" and is becoming more and more invisible. Especially for laptops, users no longer have to worry about the poor performance of the previous integrated graphics card, nor do they have to worry about the laptops with independent graphics chips being too hot and noisy, and the battery running out quickly. Because the core graphics integrated into the CPU has higher and smarter performance and more sophisticated energy consumption management, as well as more coordinated and balanced calculations with other computing units of the CPU.

When talking about the upcoming Sandy Bridge, Mr. Anthony Neal-Graves told reporters: "Intel will strengthen several things, such as certifying that most existing software can run well on SandyBridge, and at the same time make the graphics card integrated on the CPU reach professional level through some performance optimization work. Currently, Sandy Bridge is only used in entry-level workstations, and basic and professional workstations do not support this technology."

Currently, Intel defines a basic workstation as one Xeon 3600 processor, 96GB memory, and one channel of Quickpath interconnection, while an expert workstation is two Xeon 5600 processors, 192GB memory, and two channels of Quickpath interconnection. "Complex 3D modeling, simulation testing, and rendering can all be done smoothly on the desktop," said Anthony Neal-Graves.

Workstation + Manufacturing Applications

However, there is also a problem that some CAE software still does not support multi-core or only supports single-channel. Is there still room for the multi-core and multi-channel solutions provided by Intel?

Mr. Anthony Neal-Graves was also very frank about this issue: "Not all software developers are willing or have plans to use multi-core and multi-threading in this market. Noting this, we have designed multiple ways to increase the main frequency to increase the single speed in SandyBridge and our existing products. In addition, we persuade end users and ISVs to support multi-tasking. One way is to use virtualization, or package the work, or run it as a cluster."

Luo Yifeng, senior technical marketing engineer of the Server Product Division of Intel (China) Co., Ltd., gave a detailed solution to this topic: For example, if there are two-way Xeons, now there are 12-core 2-way processors, and the CAD software may only use one core, you can put the main CAD software on the operating system, such as Win7, and you can also use the virtualization solution based on Win7 to put the CAD software on the virtual machine, which can make good use of the unused cores. Even different applications on these virtual machines can be connected to the high-performance computing of the background data center, or connected to other workstations to form a cluster of workstations, and many CAE calculations can be put on these cores to run. The cluster of multiple workstations and CAE calculations are put on the core to run, so that the number of CPU cores can be better utilized. It is reported that some manufacturing companies have begun testing such usage.

Diversified Choices

Although it will take time for the technology integration in the industry chain, the price threshold of workstations has been greatly reduced for front-line engineers. As a technology manufacturer, Intel also provides a wide range of technology options.

With the launch of Win7, Intel CPU has achieved the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit. With the exponential growth of CAD modeling applications, 64-bit can use very powerful memory addressing technology and support a larger computing workload. In terms of the presentation of workstations, in addition to desktop workstations, mobile workstations and even tablet workstations are also beginning to come into people's view. Another trend is virtualization, which is to concentrate professional workstation hardware in the background. Compared with desktop workstations, this approach is more suitable for high-end applications. For example, "use part of the cores in the workstation specifically for CAD design, and use the remaining cores through virtualization to do the work as background rendering calculations. It can form a cluster of workstations and work with the server."

Technology always leads applications. Diversified choices are an inevitable trend and also pave the way for future applications.