CIE Automotive and Simulation

This automotive company already collaborates with research centres and universities across the Basque Country.

CIE Automotive's software and research departments work with CAD, CAE and simulation tools.

It is funny coz some centres have to kill themselves to find this kinda of clients and we, in the basque, are surrounded by them ;-) perhaps because they are basque companies :-p

Brain Drain

An HPC centre will never exist in the Basque if we keep exporting PhD graduates, due to a lack of national strategy. HPC was labeled as strategic for US industry: why is it not for the Basque ?

Mercedes-Benz CAD

Daimler Group assembles Viano and Vito vans in the Basque Country, in the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz. Around this company 5,000 employees are directly and indirectly employed.They are known users of Hyperworks from Altair for this product specifically, and much other CAx tools that I have not had time to find.

With the recession hitting hard we got great tools around to help and start creating local value: in this critical field for HPC. The Basque Automotive Industry Association represents the importance of auto industry in the basque. Recently Automobile Intelligence Centre was created, and this could also help to create a UNIX/CAD pole in the Basque Country. Local SME as providers of this multinationals could also benefit of using the HPC resources provided in a possible centre.

Iberdrola HPC

We already heard the Iberdrola -a basque based energy company- did some deals with IBM. But these engineering slides slightly detail the usage of HPC for their meteoflow processing model. As they say a private supercomputer -the largest in Spain- of 450 nodes.

Further explained here.

Yet another industrial client lost: The Basque could be providing expertise to its companies, why do we let other multinationals do that work ? Added value HPC professionals could be extremely useful for Basque Industry and could create a missing market in here. We need to rethink this.

Networking is Great

Happy to read that three Basque research centers Tecnalia, The University of the Basque Country and BCAM have celebrated a joint workshop. These three are already known for dealing or creating home-grown HPC software and it is great that they met "with the intended to enhance and foster cooperation between these different groups and promote their interaction as agents of the R+D+i system in the Basque Country".

The Basque still needs a coordinated management of HPC resources and specific computational expertise grouped, although it seems that this is meeting goes into the right direction, as no HPC center can grow without relevant users.

Text Available here.

Home Grown Software (Part I - Aircrafts)

Two Basque companies developing software:

"A software to improve the design of aircraft wings"

"TECNALIA and AERNNOVA are working together on the ICARO project to develop MDO (Multidisciplinary Optimisation) software aimed at optimising the design of aircraft wings and thus reduce the main design variables, such as manufacturing costs and weight."


Further Info:
http://www.sciencecentric.com/news/article.php?q=09043008-a-software-improve-the-design-aircraft-wings

Epsilon Euskadi - The most important Industrial Client

"Epsilon Euskadi is a Motor Racing Innovation & Technology Centre aiming to be an international reference point in its field of activity and beyond."

"Epsilon is supported by four activity columns that link to each other in a cycle and also delivering company business and social benefits independently:

• Education
• Design and R&D
• Production
• Racing Teams"

"The new Centre is equipped with the first rolling road Wind Tunnel of Spain. This extraordinary infrastructure is the support tool for aerodynamic engineering services, not only to motor sport but also for many different industries. A Super Computer – second most powerful in Spain- is also to be installed delivering high calculation capacity needed for optimizing results of simulation software and will be available for calculation time renting."

Without any doubt, Epsilon represents the most important industrial client of HPC known in the Basque Region. Just check the photos of the new facility.

Further Information:

-Epsilon Euskadi's Web Page
-Photos of the Impressive New Building