Linux and Formula One

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The choice of Linux is driven by "the graduate engineers who come out of university, and are used to working with open source." A lot of post-graduate research is "done in HPC and they carry that mentality over to their working lives", says Vickers. Linux is the dominant operating system in the field of high performance computing, and "is far easier to move around, compile the source code, tweak the code and recompile. This is what attracts people in these kind of arenas," says Vickers. "There is far more scalability and flexibility." The same system that can run on 2000 core processors with terrabytes of memory can be tweaked and tested on the engineer's laptop. In a world where a fraction of a second makes all the difference the ability to tweak the parameters, adjust the algorithms, and push the equations to their limits, can be the difference between winning and losing. As in all high performance industries the motor racing teams have found a distinct advantage in working with open source, for the most practical of reasons, performance, cost and flexibility.

The gee-whizz company
Once known as the "gee-whizz company" for its pioneering work in high-end graphics systems, SGI has been the purveyor of fridge-sized machines that were "never knowingly biege" for HPC and advanced visualisation since the mid '80s. Then famous for its role in providing compositing, animation and rendition tools for the special effects houses, SGI merged with Cray Research in 1996, and now specialises in areas where there is a demand for high performance computing, storage, visualisation and the manipulation of of vast banks of technical data. It's a specialised market in which SGI has very little competition. The applications have moved on and the demands of the market have become more sophisticated. And so have the machines. Typically high-end SGI Altix machines are located in the R&D departments of manufacturing and research institutes, where high-performance computing and data-intensive processing and simulation is a necessity. All SGI systems are powered by Linux. They are a good fit for the high tech world of the Formula One racing car.

"What we do in high performance computing with Linux breaks some boundaries", says Vickers. "What you're able to do with the open source community is far more flexible and allows you far more freedom of choice or inspiration, so that people can create and be creative, and leverage the creativity of a very considerable community worldwide. The engineers, depending in the different teams, have different views of how to use CFD. Some use clusters, and some use large shared memory systems. Linux is flexible enough to deliver similar results." What makes the difference is the particular input and vision of the individual engineers.

Linux is widely used in Formula One. AMD work with Ferrari, the Sauber team and others. BMW/Williams employ a Linux solution provided by HP. Linux is also used by the Ducati motor cycle racing team. Linux is chosen for the usual reasons - reliability, cost and price/performance. Cost is a secondary consideration to performance. More important is the versatility of Linux, and its proven record on high-density clustering solutions and large shared memory systems, which at some of the racing teams, such as Ferrari, entails more than 500 nodes to a cluster. Linux allows the teams to build scalable solutions for a fast moving industry that demands a quick and versatile response to rapidly changing parameters.

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