CASE HISTORYAcer Group Builds Data Center Together with Scuderia Ferrari

About Acer Since its founding in 1976, Acer has achieved the goal of breaking the barriers between people and technology. Globally, Acer ranks No. 2 for total PCs and notebooks. A profitable and sustainable Channel Business Model is instrumental to the company’s continuing growth, while its multi-brand approach effectively integrates Acer, Gateway, Packard Bell, and eMachines brands in worldwide markets. Acer strives to design environmentally friendly products and establish a green supply chain through collaboration with suppliers. Acer is proud to be a Worldwide Partner of the Olympic Movement, including the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games and London 2012 Olympic Games. The Acer Group employs 8,000 people worldwide. Revenues for 2010 reached US$19.9 billion. See www.acer-group.com for more information.

© 2012 Acer Inc. All rights reserved. Acer and the Acer logo are registered trademarks of Acer Inc. Other trademarks, registered trademarks, and/or service marks, indicated or otherwise, are the property of their respective owners.

CASE HISTORY Acer Group Builds Data Center Together with Scuderia Ferrari2

Acer Group Builds Data Center Together with Scuderia Ferrari CASE HISTORY 3

CUSTOMER PROFILE Page 3

SNAPSHOT Page 3

OVERVIEW Page 4

THE CHALLENGE Page 5

THE REASONS Page 6

THE SOLUTION Page 6

RESULTS Page 7

INDEXCUSTOMER PROFILEFounded by Enzo Ferrari in 1929, Scuderia Ferrari is one of the most famous car racing teams in the world and boasts an exceptional track record. Active in the Formula 1 world championship since its establishment in 1950, Scuderia Ferrari has always been one of the leading players and won the drivers’ title 15 times and the constructors’ title 16 times.

SNAPSHOTScuderia Ferrari launched a project to provide its data center, the heart of the design, with the most advanced technological infrastructure, in order to be able to successfully face the growing application requirements.After careful analysis of available solutions, the company chose Gateway, a brand of the Acer Group, as the technology partner best suited for the build of the HPC (High Performance Computing) system capable of providing the optimal support in the design and development of the racing cars within the restraints set by Formula 1 rules. Gateway’s server solutions were the best choice and enabled Ferrari to reach its objectives and to deliver exceptional performance, accurate calculations and optimised energy consumption at the same time.

CASE HISTORY Acer Group Builds Data Center Together with Scuderia Ferrari4

Acer Group Builds Data Center Together with Scuderia Ferrari CASE HISTORY 5

OVERVIEWScuderia Ferrari is known worldwide for the quality and excellence of the performance of their cars involved in the F1 championship. The achievements are the result of the commitment of a large group of technicians, mechanics, professionals and researchers continually working to improve the quality and the high profile of the race cars.The F1 championship is undoubtedly a highly competitive environment that allows to test under extreme conditions. The technologies and solutions are later integrated into the series production, to ensure that anyone who drives a Ferrari can take advantage of the most cutting edge solutions in terms of quality and safety available on the market. The success of Scuderia Ferrari is also due to an extremely efficient logistic organisation. Thirty-five tons of material and more than seventy people, including technicians, mechanics and staff have to be moved to each circuit. This includes terminals, servers and communication infrastructure to ensure the team’s success on the track.

THE CHALLENGEIn Formula 1 racing, where even a thousandth of a second counts, there are several factors that can make the difference: cars, drivers, mechanics, technical staff, as well as state-of-the art IT infrastructure. Specifically, high performance computing solutions are an essential instrument to effectively address many of the design issues of both the car and the mechanical components. HPC systems allow to simulate the car’s behavior thus eliminating the need of prototyping and the use of a wind tunnel, which are expensive and take a lot of time.In the stage of aerodynamic design, Formula 1 teams can take enormous benefits from the ability to simulate the behaviour of the car before making prototypes. Thanks to simulation technologies, allowing to quickly test hypothetical scenarios and to make changes before the Formula 1 car is tested on the track, design times are much shorter. In this way, it is possible to achieve optimisation levels that are otherwise unattainable.

To obtain all these benefits a large computing power is required. The solution must also be able to take full advantage of the power of new processors. In addition, the system must be extremely reliable and capable of delivering the highest performance possible, in record time, with constant availability. Adequate, reliable and high performance IT infrastructure, processing capability, computing power and the ability to process complex algorithms at very high speed are essential factors for winning.

CASE HISTORY Acer Group Builds Data Center Together with Scuderia Ferrari6

Acer Group Builds Data Center Together with Scuderia Ferrari CASE HISTORY 7

THE REASONS FOR CHOOSING A NEW DATA CENTERScuderia Ferrari has always been aware that IT plays a key role in achieving success and desired results both in the design stage and during races. This is why it already relies on a high performance data centre that integrates server and storage capable of providing the computing capacity required for designing race cars.However, in such a demanding context, where the frontier of innovation is constantly shifting, even the best data centre quickly becomes obsolete. To be able to promptly respond to design demands, in the unpredictable conditions of a Formula 1 race and to effectively tackle the major application requirements, Scuderia Ferrari has decided to innovate their data centre. Performance and reliability have emerged as absolutely essential factors from the analysis of the requirements. Other key factors in creating a next generation, dynamic and flexible data center with high computing power have been identified. Among them flexibility, density and optimised cooling to offer significant energy savings.

THE SOLUTIONAfter a careful analysis of the solutions available on the market, project managers found Acer Group to be the most suitable technology partner for the implementation of a high performance computing system for the design and development of the race cars. First the company had to find the most suitable solutions among the server, storage and interconnect options available, then, it had to define innovative architectures designed to make computing power efficient and fully exploitable. Gateway, the brand of the Acer Group focused in Europe on the professional market, has made available all its experience as well as that of the technicians and researchers of its HPC competence centre at the University of Pisa. It has provided extremely reliable latest generation systems while staying within the automobile manufacturer’s budget. The result was excellent.

RESULTSThanks to Gateway’s high performance computing solutions and the support of high calibre professionals, Scuderia Ferrari has achieved the goals set when they decided to upgrade the data centre. The data centre is now able to fully satisfy Ferrari’s computing needs for design and production.With Gateway’s HPC solutions, Scuderia can now count on exceptional, high density performance with optimised power consumption and very simple management and maintenance.

“Our complete offerings of HPC solutions has been

the basis of an important and intense collaboration,

which generated the right response to Ferrari’s

needs,” commented Gianluca Degliesposti, Vice

President Global Server Business Development Acer

Group. “Gateway’s HPC configurations guarantee

competitive value for the money, thanks to the use of

flexible systems and to their smart designs in terms

of consumption and operating efficiency.

“Extreme reliability and performance are features

our servers must have,” explained Vittorio Boero,

Ferrari Information Systems Manager. “The flexibility

needed for research and development, along with the

stability of a mission critical system is an extremely

difficult combination to find on the market. This is

what we’re looking for in our partners and what we

obtained by designing, developing and activating

this solution together with Gateway.”

“We are proud we took part in this project with such

an important partner,” concludes Degliesposti. “Our

success clearly demonstrates that we’ve invested in

the right strategy for our customers.”

The solution integrates the Gateway GW2000h server platforms based on AMD technologies, with high performance Gateway storage systems and state-of-the-art, high performance interconnect network based on 80Gb/s InfiniBand technology. As for HPC capacity, the system includes several hundred interconnected Gateway servers to provide the utmost efficiency and calculation power required by the engineering applications, testing and simulations.A project this size also requires extensive skills in areas other than information technology, but still crucial to the success of the project. The constraints of available physical space, the reduction of power consumption, but also the necessity to manage the interconnect cabling required a great deal of experience during the design stage and accuracy in implementation.