OVERVIEWCountry: Germany Customer size: 200

ORGANIZATION PROFILENuCellSys GmbH, a 50/50 joint venture between Daimler and Ford Motor Com-pany, develops fuel cell systems for auto-motive applications. NuCellSys is respon-sible for system engineering and design, component and software development, and system validation and integration.

SOLUTIONThe IT department implemented a 5-node high-performance computing (HPC) cluster based on Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003. Windows-based HPC cluster-aware software is used for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Finite Ele-ment Modelling (FEM) simulations.

BENEFITS• Familiar work environment both for

administrators and users

• Easy installation and administration

• Reduction of development time and shorten time-to-market

PLATFORMWindows Compute Cluster Server 2003

HARDWAREFujitsu-Siemens “Primergy RX330” server with AMD Opteron 2220 processor

VERTICAL INDUSTRY• Energy • Transportation • Automotive

NuCellSys GmbH: “The Fuel Cell System Company”

Windows-based HPC cluster solution assists in a new era of green mobility

NuCellSys GmbH is developing and manufacturing fuel cell systems for vehicle applications. To better predict the behavior and the interaction of components and modules, reduce the development time and the amount of testing, the company decided to expand its simulation capabilities. With its Windows-based HPC cluster solution, NuCellSys now can benefi t from supercomputing power with indus-try-standard PC servers for simulations that aid in the development of fuel cell systems for the “driving green age”.

SituationNuCellSys GmbH, a 50/50 joint venture between Daimler and Ford Motor Company, develops next-generation fuel cell systems for automotive appli-cations. Within the Fuel Cell Alliance between Daimler, Ford, and AFCC (Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation), NuCellSys is responsible for system engi-neering and design, component and software development, as well as system validation and integration.

Zero emission and maximal effi ciency are the guiding principles for the deve-lopment commitment of NuCellSys. Located near Kirchheim/Teck-Nabern in Germany, more than 200 highly specialized employees in interdisciplinary teams join the technology and alliance partners for the development of fuel cell drive systems on a lab space of 6.700 m2.

„Wir befanden uns mitten in einem Kundenprojekt und benötigten schnell eine Lösung. Microsoft Windows HPC Server war die ideale Antwort für uns.”

Hans-Jörg Dittmann, Manager Specialist Engineering, Bombardier Transportation GmbH, Kassel/Germany

„Wir befanden uns mitten in einem Kundenprojekt und benötigten schnell eine Lösung. Microsoft Windows HPC Server war die ideale HPC Server war die ideale Antwort für uns.”HPC Server war die ideale HPC Server war die ideale HPC Server war die ideale Antwort für uns.”

“The installation of the Microsoft Compute Clus-ter Server was very easy.”

Jörg Höninger, IT system manager at NuCellSys GmbH

The company successfully demonstrates that fuel cell vehicles are ready for everyday use: 90 passenger cars and light trucks have been in customer hands for three years in Europe, Canada, the USA, Japan, and China. 40 fuel cell buses are serving public transportation in 13 cities in Europe, California, Aust-ralia, and China. With more than 4.4 million road kilometers achieved, these vehicles have proven the suitability of the fuel cell “driving green” technology for everyday use.

The development of fuel cell systems requires a lot of understanding of fl ow, temperature, and pressure distribution, because they have a lot of impact on the performance in general. These parameters are vastly infl uenced by factors like the CAD design of single components, the chosen materials including their orientation and the packaging in the various subsystems. In the past, NuCellSys achieved results mainly by intensive testing of systems and specifi c subsystems. This was not only cost intensive, but also took a lot of time, hence negatively affecting project timeframes and impacting short time-to-market.

Therefore, the company looked for better testing capabilities to predict the behavior of the design and fundamental parameters. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations were favorite candidates. Outsourcing the simula-tions to an external entity was not an appropriate option because this know-ledge is a core competence for the design of fuel cell systems. This reinforced the need for implementing a powerful, fl exible simulation platform in-house. Regarding IT, the fi rst talks took place in October 2007. “Simulation was a com-pletely new topic – not only for our engineers, but for us here in the IT depart-ment as well,” explained Jörg Höninger, IT system manager at NuCellSys.”

SolutionAlthough there was no experience with simulation available inside the IT department, the decision for simulation software (“Fluent” from Ansys) was already made in the engineering department – because the department of engineering was engaged with a project initiated by an alliance partner that required CFD simulations with this specifi c software. Hence, Jörg Höninger and his team began with the search for a platform that is suited for running this simulation software considering the specifi cations the engineers had. With computations that contain two million elements, it became very clear for Jörg Höninger that a single-user workstation was not suited to perform these kinds of simulation tasks at all.

After looking for a better simulation platform, he found Microsoft “Windows Compute Cluster Server” (CCS) 2003, the predecessor of today’s Microsoft “HPC Server 2008”. Because all productions systems at the fuel cell company are run-ning under Windows (and the Fluent software is available for Windows as well), it was a natural choice for him to continue to use the Microsoft architecture for simulation purposes – and not to switch to another operating system just for high-performance computing purposes.

The decision of NuCellSys to count on Windows CCS 2003 as simulation plat-form enabled the company to enter the supercomputing age by utilizing com-

monly available, well-priced industry-standard PC server hardware to build a high-performance computing cluster. In the fi rst phase, fi ve servers – one head-node and four compute nodes – manufactured by Fujitsu-Siemens and equip-ped with AMD Opteron quad-core processors were implemented in the data center. After the integration of the hardware into the corporate Active Directory domain the head node was confi gured to distribute the jobs to the compute nodes. For security reasons, only the head node is visible in the local area net-work (LAN) of the company. All compute nodes are grouped together in a sepa-rate VLAN (virtual LAN) and can only be accessed through the head node that distributes the jobs received from the engineers. They use Windows XP Professi-onal x64 Edition as client operating system on their workstations, together with the simulation software.

Benefi tsTo date, the results are impressive. Simulation jobs that would have taken weeks on a single workstation are completed over-night. “Without implementing the Windows-based HPC cluster solution from Microsoft, we would not have been able to incorporate an in-house simulation platform that is so easy to use, power-ful and fl exible to expand,” Jörg Höninger described.

Rapid installation and easy administrationThe whole installation was fi nished in one day. As a result, the solution was rea-dy to use rapidly. In March 2008, just six months after the fi rst discussions bet-ween the engineers and the IT department of NuCellSys, the simulation plat-form based on Windows high-performance computing went live.

At the administration side, the additional complexity caused by the compute cluster remains low. Jörg Höninger: “As a small IT department with only 4 specia-lists, you can imagine we didn’t have the manpower to spend a signifi cant amount of extra time for supporting the compute cluster.” In the opening stage, additional resources needed were 0.5 MD/week, he clarifi ed. On the long run however, the IT system manager is confi dent to dedicate just 1.5 hours per week for administering the cluster.

Familiar work environmentFrom an environment perspective, users continue to utilize Microsoft Windows which they are already familiar with. With the simulation software NuCellSys has chosen, the engineers are designing simulations, submitting jobs to the compute cluster, and analyzing the results from a single environment. They can fully concentrate on their work and reduce the development time of new fuel cell components, modules, and solutions.

“With the Windows-based HPC cluster solution we all could just stay in our well-known Windows environment,” Jörg Höninger added. “Our IT staff enjoys the same administration experience, whereas our engineers have the computational speed available they need to perform their simulations.”

“Using the Windows plat-form for implementing high-performance compu-ting to perform simulation was the right decision.”

Jörg Höninger, IT system manager at NuCellSys GmbH

Cluster expansionThe high-performance computing solution based on Microsoft Windows is very well received at NuCellSys. Other user also desired to benefi t from the super-computing power that is now available within the company. ”Just weeks after we initially started with our compute cluster, another engineer team came along and asked us to provide them with more computational speed as well,” Jörg Höninger explained.

Using the supercomputing power for simulations became popular very fast inside NuCellSys. Accordingly, Fluent is not the only simulation software any more using the compute cluster at NuCellSys. “Abacus”, used for Finite Element Modelling (FEM), is the second one. Moreover, with “MatLab” the third cluster-aware software for the Windows-based HPC cluster at NuCellSys is already on the horizon as one of the next steps to expand the usage of the compute cluster.

More InformationFor more information about Microsoft’s Windows-based HPC cluster solution and Windows HPC Server 2008, please visit www.microsoft.com/hpc.

More information about the products and services from NuCellSys can be found on the web site www.nucellsys.com.

CONTACT INFORMATION

NuCellSys GmbH

Neue Strasse 95 Industriepark Nabern D-73230 Kirchheim/Teck-Nabern Germany

Fon +49 (0) 7021.89-3666 Fax +49 (0) 7021.89-4110

info@NuCellSys.com www.NuCellSys.com

Weitere Kundenreferenzen fi nden Sie unter: www.microsoft.com/germany/kundenreferenzen