Red Bull Racing Revs Formula One Design Engine with IBM and AMD

Red Bull Racing Revs Formula One Design Engine with IBM and AMD

At a press conference in New York City today, IBM announced that Red Bull Racing, a division of Red Bull® Energy Drink, has accelerated its Formula One design studio’s computing power with new IBM System x servers based on the AMD Opteron processor. The high performance computing cluster — which will contain more than $3.5 million in new equipment — will increase Red Bull Racing’s computing muscle and help the company further improve its race car design and speed car production by a factor of eighty percent.

Red Bull Racing intends to use the new systems specifically for aerodynamic modeling. Aerodynamics is a critical factor in successfully designing a Formula 1 car, as they must be designed to maximize the ideal amount of downward force while minimizing wind resistance. The IBM solution will help Red Bull Racing quadruple its computing power to design more accurate models for virtual testing before starting costly, physical product development.

“The competitive nature of the racing industry requires us to be on the cutting edge of technology so that we can speed past our competition in car design,” said Nathan Sykes, Computational Fluid Dynamics Manager, Red Bull Racing. “Every second counts – whether it’s in our design labs or on the racetrack. This new state-of-the-art computing platform built on IBM systems now enables us to streamline research and processes associated with simulation testing, and shorten the time it takes to bring our designs to life. IBM was the only vendor that could provide us with a complete solution to advance our business.”

Red Bull Racing’s design models have seen an increase in size by twenty percent in the past year alone. Along with the need for a high performance computing cluster to crunch a growing number of calculations accurately, Red Bull Racing needs to continuously increase the speed in which the calculations are completed to maintain its lead against the competition. With IBM System x powered by the AMD Opteron processor, Red Bull Racing was able to leverage IBM Xcelerated Memory Technology to access data stored in memory more quickly. With IBM’s eXtended I/O, Red Bull Racing will also have the ability to add additional accelerator or graphics cards to the system.

Read the complete Press Release