Subaru uses high performance computing on OCI to improve engineering simulations
Subaru’s main R&D plant boosts future car development using HPC on OCI to create simulations for better collision safety and reduced cabin noise.
“We chose OCI because it allowed us to dramatically reduce operational costs. And, making greater use of OCI will streamline our planning and development, increase our ability to flexibly handle new technologies, and allow us to create vehicles that guarantee safety in any situation.”
Business challenges
Subaru develops unique technologies to bring a variety of improvements to automobiles, such as a driving support system called Eyesight. The company’s well-known cars, such as the Forester and Legacy models, aim to inspire drivers with safety and comfort.
Due to ever-increasing design simulation performance needs, improving vehicle performance and features became a challenge for the carmaker. The company’s costly hardware upgrades couldn’t keep up with the increasing computation and engineering simulation demands. Even a 20X increase in Subaru’s server size for computer aided engineering wasn’t enough.
Subaru wanted to cut costs and run more precise, larger simulations. In short, it needed one secure public cloud to bring higher performance, flexibility, and the best cost-performance ratio for its computer-aided engineering simulation platform.
Using high performance computing on OCI, Subaru reduced computer-aided engineering times by about 20%, improved the performance of simulations, and cut costs.
Why Subaru chose Oracle
To identify the best public cloud, Subaru took part in the Japan Automobile Manufacturer’s Association’s cloud working group. After a rigorous investigation, Subaru decided to migrate its HPC workloads of tens of thousands of cores to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) from its former on-premises HPC environment in order to improve computer-aided engineering simulations, gain flexibility to perform needed simulations on time, and move to a pay-per-use cost model.
Results
OCI is the first public cloud to offer bare metal HPC computing with an RDMA cluster network, with a latency under two microseconds and 100 Gbps bandwidth. Shifting to OCI eliminated on-premises expansion costs and complexity issues, giving Subaru resources to perform calculations on demand.
OCI made rapid resource expansion a reality, while the new levels of performance made computational fluid dynamics simulation improvements possible. The carmaker eliminated calculation deviations and stabilized performance quality, all while cutting both calculation times and development costs.
Oracle Cloud Lift Services offered free cloud migration support and facilitated the decision-making process for Subaru. It helped to set up the platform in just two months and train first-time OCI users.
Subaru maintains full control of the cost allocation and use of its flexible cloud resources. It uses the cloud bursting function of Altair PBS Professional Solution built on OCI to start the nodes required for calculation and can delete the nodes when the calculation is completed. Subaru also shortened the time between ordering a server and starting development by more than 50%.
Partners
Longtime partner Argo Graphics helped construct an optimal environment for Subaru.
Subaru was able to design and deploy its system in just two months using the OCI Environment Construction Support Service offered by Argo Graphics, together with support from Oracle Cloud Lift Services.
About the customer
Subaru is the automobile manufacturing division of Japanese transportation conglomerate Subaru Corporation. It began as Nakajima Aircraft Company, founded in 1917, just 14 years after the Wright brothers succeeded in the first powered flight in 1903. The company is famous for its original cars such as the Subaru 360, Legacy, Forester, and more.