Force India upgrades its tech yet again
December 21, 2009 by SJ Skid
Filed under Prime & Option
It looks like Force India has no intention of allowing the Lotuses, Virgins and USF1s of the world to pull in front of it next year.
About a month after revealing the team was updating its computer storage system, Force India has announced a three-year deal with Computational Research Laboratories, an India computing outfit, that will give the team access to a supercomputer capable of 133 trillion calculations per second.
Here’s parts of the release:
Computational Research Laboratories (CRL), a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons, and Force India Formula One Team (FIF1), India’s first and only F1 team, today announced an exclusive three-year multi-million dollar partnership deal to offer a fully automated Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) solution to aid the design of the team’s next generation race cars as well improve aerodynamic efficiency in the current racing models. This will be the first time a Formula 1 team will leverage an Indian HPC (high performance computing) organization for their design activities.
In conjunction with physical wind tunnel and straight line testing, Force India relies on virtual prototypes and CFD methods to improve racing car aerodynamics and accuracy by conducting complex simulations without compromising processing times. The sheer computing power provided by CRL will enable Force India to reduce its design cycle times, thus providing the team’s drivers with the best chance of a strong result.
With this partnership, Force India’s design team will now have access to ‘eka’, India’s fastest supercomputer and one of the most versatile supercomputers in the world that is capable of 133 trillion calculations per second! The new system will increase Force India’s CFD computing capacity in the first year by a factor of at least four, allowing the team to model the car’s aerodynamics in much more detail and deliver results in greatly reduced time frames.
Dr. Vijay Mallya, Chairman and Team Principal, Force India Formula One Team Ltd said, ”Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations are a critical part of Force India’s car design process to continually improve the team’s aerodynamic performance. The tie-up with CRL will significantly accelerate Force India’s computational simulations to drive better on-track results. The tie-up with CRL gives us an immediate 200% increase in our CFD processing capability which will rise to almost 800% by the end of 2010. We have integrated our own CFD methods with the CRL facility to allow Force India’s CFD engineers to seamlessly interface between the UK and India effectively, giving us increased processing power. The CRL facility allows us to run significantly more CFD cases, in the region of 200% more cases per day, with twice the model size currently possible. In the future this will increase still further and also allow Force India to undertake significant development of the current CFD methods in us”.
Mr. S Ramodarai, Chairman, CRL, said: “With this partnership, CRL reconfirms its commitment to develop technology that will aid in design activities and make it seamless for the companies to take advantage of HPC. We are really proud to be associated with a brand such as Force India Formula One Team which has showcased India as a team to watch in the global motor racing arena. This deal demonstrates the value that an organization can get by leveraging ‘eka’, and the complete HPC support ecosystem we have set up at CRL.”
Virtual wind tunnel simulation applications on ‘eka’, using Computational Fluid Dynamics, can help address the limitations of a testing environment in understanding the impact of design on the aerodynamic abilities of aeroplanes and automobiles. The CFD designs for Formula One cars, are amongst the most complicated, and require extremely high computing powers for timely and accurate results. CRL will provide Force India with a complete HPC ecosystem, ranging from fully automated pre processing to post processing simulation work flow on ‘eka’, customized configurations to application optimization services for Force India’s design activities.
Given how important the virtual design tools are today, this sounds like a major step forward.
I also think it suggests both that Force India is working to build on its 2009 success and that it leaders believe some of the new teams will be competitive. Anyone sense if it is more the former or the latter?
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I think Mallya wants to win a race next season. If that means spending resources in building a specialized car (fast circuits) then he’ll do so. In fact, I think all new teams should go that route, instead of trying to build a balanced car and suck all year around. If it wasn’t for Kimi’s special button, Vijay would’ve had his first win. (Crazy to think of it that way though, Ferrari without wins and Fifi with one, in 2009.)
This may well give a big advantage with all the testing restrictions and the hours in wind tunnels being minimized.
I don’t think this has anything to do with the new teams. It seems that Mallya smelled a little of success this year especially when his team was fighting with the big boys in Spa and Monza and now he wants a taste of the good staff. He really wants to get in the game. The only problem is his drivers. If the car is even closer to the big guys than what it was this year then it would be a waste because a better driver would have made it look even better and really give big points to the team.
Sutil is at Ficichella level and we all remember how bad Alonso made him look. As of Luizi his probably even worse. If Heidfeld loses the Sauber position because of waiting, maybe Vijay should give him a call.
mallya’s intent from the beginning was to stay in the game and climb up the pack. he now has some very good momentum to build on and he’s doing just that. he’s made good on every promise he’s made to advance. so kudos to him and the team! as for drivers, fisi never was able to prove that he’s a winning driver, but i’m not convinced sutil is a dead end. i think he does have the skill, and is young enough to the sport that he’s not stuck in the same hole fisi was. i think with the right car, we all may be surprised at what sutil can pull off.
Force India needs a win – if only to convince Bernie to have an F1 race in India. But, there is a fly in the ointment here… in scientific circles this supercomputer is known as tata (as in bye bye) when it comes to reliable data.