Nakashima Propeller Implemented Voltaire Grid Director Switches

Voltaire Ltd. announced that Nakashima Propeller has implemented Voltaire Grid Director switches as the interconnect for a clustered system to speed up the design and manufacture of ship propellers. Nakashima Propeller is among the world’s major suppliers of ship propellers.

The system helps save seven days of computing time along with unnecessary costs for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The use of Voltaire InfiniBand switches for the system’s cluster interconnect greatly improves the efficiency of the overall system as well as the software’s performance, allowing for deeper and faster analysis and decreasing the design time needed for new propellers.

“A well-designed propeller makes all the difference in a ship’s efficiency, speed and safety,” said Mr. Nobuhiro Hasuike, Deputy Manager of the Design Department at Nakashima Propeller Co., Ltd. “By using Voltaire InfiniBand for the cluster interconnect, our CFD software runs faster and more efficiently accelerating the propeller design process. In the end, we’re able to deliver the final product to our customers more quickly than ever before.”

The cluster was designed, installed and maintained by Japan-based systems integrator HPC Solutions and consists of Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008, Dell PowerEdge 1950 servers with Intel CPUs connected with Voltaire Grid Director switches. Voltaire Grid Director switches use 20 Gb/second InfiniBand technology, which provides high bandwidth and very low latency to enhance the infrastructure and application performance. The cluster runs simulations of cavitation flow around marine propellers using SC/Tetra CFD software developed by Software Cradle, Co., Ltd.

“Voltaire InfiniBand ensures the best system performance, providing SC/Tetra with the platform to speed up and better-resolve its simulations, which in turn enables Nakashima Propeller to design their products more efficiently,” said Mr. Hiroyuki Kuroishi, Assistant General Manager of Software Engineering Dept., Software Cradle Co., Ltd.

“Nakashima Propeller is a great example of the application performance improvement and tangible business benefits that can be attained using 20 Gb/s Voltaire InfiniBand on Windows HPC Server 2008,” said Vince Mendillo, director of HPC marketing at Microsoft.

“Nakashima Propeller has dramatically reduced the amount of time it takes to design a new product for its customers without compromising the superior performance, safety and reliability its propellers are known for,” said Asaf Somekh, vice president of marketing, Voltaire. “By including Voltaire InfiniBand in their new clustered system, Nakashima Propeller can speed up design time for new propellers while saving costs and improving the bottom line.”