SGI Helps Tata Motors Enhance Vehicle Design Quality, Reduce Time to Market And Cut Costs
Integrated HPC, Visual Area Networking and Storage Solutions Accelerate Design and Manufacturing Process
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Sept. 8 -- SGI today announced that Tata Motors Ltd., India's only fully integrated automobile manufacturer, has purchased several high-performance computing, visualization and storage solutions from SGI that will be used to improve the design, engineering and manufacture of its passenger cars and commercial vehicles. Tata Motors turned to SGI to improve design quality, reduce design-cycle time, and to control costs manufacturing its cars -- each paramount in the auto industry where manufacturers must compete globally. They systems were purchased on April 30 and shipped June 13.
Using SGI(R) Visual Area Networking and Storage Area Networking (SAN) technologies to integrate SGI(R) Altix(TM) 3000 compute servers and SGI(R) Onyx(R) 3900 visualization systems, Tata has integrated a high-productivity solution that is available over the network to designers throughout the organization.
The Indian automaker has the distinction of giving India its first and only indigenously built passenger car -- Indica -- and premium feature sedan -- Indigo both designed and developed with SGI technology. The Indica reached the 2.5 million sales mark within 52 months of launch, a phenomenal success that stands testimony to Tata Motors' research and engineering expertise and the power of SGI technology that enables significant improvements in styling, occupant safety, structural analysis, and noise and vibration testing.
Tata recently extended its SGI installation with Altix 3000 servers powered by Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 processors and the open-source Linux(R) operating system and Onyx 3900 visualization systems with InfinitePerformance(TM) graphics and OpenGL Vizserver(TM) software. The new systems will act as Visual Area Networking servers and deliver high-performance visual analysis of large design and analysis models directly to personal computers and workstations at engineering desktops. To link together the Altix(TM) and Onyx(R) systems in a storage area network (SAN) environment, Tata Motors also purchased SGI(R) Total Performance 9100 storage systems, cost-effective, modular, high-performance Fibre Channel RAID for large-scale data-intensive applications, and CXFS(TM), the industry's fastest shared filesystem.
The company's recent change in name from Tata Engineering and Locomotive Company (Telco) to Tata Motors is to reflect its core activity of design, manufacture and marketing of automobiles. Tata invested in SGI HPC, visualization and storage solutions because it will help the company bring new better quality models to market faster, at lower cost, and with more options for their customers. The company required a technology environment that efficiently manages the increasing complexity of data in the vehicle development process, and that's what SGI delivered. SGI technology has put Tata Motors on the fast track of product development.
Tata Motors has reaped the benefits of a virtual, 3-D collaborative environment with an SGI(R) Reality Center(R) facility, which was recently installed and was the first in the Indian automobile industry. SGI Reality Center facilities seamlessly integrate advanced visualization hardware and software technologies to create immersive environments that envelop participants in a state of virtual reality. In this virtual reality environment, designers can introduce new concept vehicles to their colleagues in a 3-D simulated space. By making decisions based on digital models rather than mock-ups, Tata Motors saves developmental time and money while significantly reducing time to market.
"The VAN environment at Tata Motors will accelerate design and analysis workflows by giving designers and engineers rapid access SAN based data without having to wait for it to be copied to their desktops," said Larry McArthur, senior director of manufacturing industry marketing, SGI. "The VAN environment will lead to improved designs because individuals can work with very large models and complex analyses that do not fit on their PCs. It will also allow them to remain at their desks but interactively and visually work with colleagues at remote sites or as a group in an SGI Reality Center facility. In short, the VAN environment provides universal access to the Tata Motors integrated HPC and visualization solution to any user, anywhere at any time."
At the core of their production environment Tata selected an SGI(R) Storage Area Network with the company's CXFS(TM) shared file system. CXFS removes the wait time, storage space and management costs associated with traditional data sharing approaches by giving all systems on the SAN access to all the data on the SAN as though it was their own. By doing this, CXFS significantly reduces the cost and complexity of data access, management and protection in Tata's production process; providing instant, no-copy data sharing between the Altix compute and the Onyx visualization systems. A further benefit of this approach is that Tata administrators only need access to one system on the SAN to back up the entire environment -- greatly reducing the system, network and administration resources required to protect Tata's engineering data.
About Tata Motors
Established in 1945 as the Tata Engineering and Locomotive Company to manufacture locomotives and other engineering products, Tata Motors is today among the world's top 10 producers of commercial vehicles. Tata Motors is the flagship company of the Tata Group with an annual turnover of approximately $2.28 billion for 2002-2003. Its product range covers passenger cars, multi-utility vehicles, light, medium and heavy commercial vehicles for goods and passenger transport. Seven out of 10 medium and heavy commercial vehicles in India bear the trusted Tata mark. The company enjoys a significant demand in export markets such as Europe, Australia, South East Asia, the Middle East and Africa, with vehicles currently selling in over 70 countries.
About SGI
SGI, also known as Silicon Graphics, Inc., is the world's leader in high-performance computing, visualization and storage. SGI's vision is to provide technology that enables the most significant scientific and creative breakthroughs of the 21st century. Whether it's sharing images to aid in brain surgery, finding oil more efficiently, studying global climate or enabling the transition from analog to digital broadcasting, SGI is dedicated to addressing the next class of challenges for scientific, engineering and creative users. SGI was named on FORTUNE magazine's 2003 list of "Top 100 Companies to Work For." With offices worldwide, the company is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., and can be found on the Web at www.sgi.com.
NOTE: Silicon Graphics, Onyx, Reality Center, OpenGL, XFS, SGI, and the SGI logo are registered trademarks and Altix, CXFS, InfinitePerformance and OpenGL Vizserver are trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries worldwide. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. Intel and Itanium are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.
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