StarkStrom in the fast lane: Powerful PC for simulations - TUXEDO Computers

Three devices donated by TUXEDO - for the current season and beyond

The Formula Student team StarkStrom is taking giant steps forward: After a Stellaris 15 as a car PC and an InfinityBook S 15 as a workstation for the Driverless Team, the team was pleased to receive a powerful desktop PC for simulations at the beginning of February.

TUXEDO CORE Six AMD Ryzen Series - Gen5

The PC has 128 GB RAM and is equipped with both an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and two 2 TB SSDs. A NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 serves as a special highlight. The team had asked to receive this powerful graphics card instead of the GeForce RTX 3080 on offer, which was not yet available in the web shop at the time. "However, we already had a few units in advance and were therefore able to use the Formula Student team's desktop computer straight away for internal testing purposes," explains Herbert Feiler, Managing Director of TUXEDO Computers. "So it'sa win-win situation for everyone involved. The team gets a high-quality PC with the latest technology and we can work on internal issues earlier so that we can deliver finished systems to customers faster."

Those who are not familiar with electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, etc. may not fully understand why the team needs a very powerful PC.

Tim Guttzeit (Team Captain & Technical Director Software): "Especially for e.g. the simulations of the aerodynamics package, the most powerful processor possible and a lot of RAM are necessary. For CFD simulations (Computational Fluid Dynamics) for the aerodynamics package, the car is placed in a very large cuboid. This makes the whole thing work like a virtual wind tunnel. In order to measure even small geometries in the huge wind tunnel, the entire wind tunnel is divided into several million cells and each cell is calculated individually. So-called parameter simulations are then to be carried out on the PC, in which the geometry of a component is defined in certain areas and the computer is then to calculate the best parameter combinations of bending radii, lengths, etc. Without a powerful PC, this takes forever for a component such as an entire front wing."

So that makes it clear why the PC must have some power. And what do we need the latest generation of graphics cards for?

TG: "We need them above all for rendering (creating a graphic from raw data) the components. This also takes a long time otherwise, and for the public appearance and the engineering design event, good representations of our innovations are extremely important. The latter is about describing the approach to the development of the vehicle and its components to experts from the industry at the events at the end of the season and to justify and defend decisions in the development process.

A good graphics card is also urgently needed for simulations of the driverless system. Unfortunately, we are not yet able to simulate our systems for environment recognition. However, the tool we use offers the possibility to generate camera images with the Unreal Engine, with which in the best case we can also train our neural network for image recognition.

The more precise and realistic the mechanical FEM simulations (finite element method; for example, for strength and deformation investigations of solids with geometrically complex shapes) are, the more complex they become. With TUXEDO Core Six, we can achieve the best possible results while keeping a reasonable timeframe. Structural optimisation also requires immense computing power. With the optimised parts, a lot of weight can be saved on the race car. Being able to work with strong equipment thus brings the performance and reliability of the components and the whole car a big step forward."

The PC will then not only be used for the current vehicle, but you also want to integrate it into your IT infrastructure.

TG: "At the moment we have the problem that you always have to bring your own laptop or even PC to the workshop if you want to have your files and data ready to work. With the power of the PC, we have the option of an Active Directory in our workshop to make the few workstations we have convenient for all to use."

Thank you Tim for the insights and we wish you good luck and continued success!