First of all, it can be noted that Altair HPCWorks is now included in the Altair Units licensing system. This flexible, scalable and dynamic licensing allows users to drive frictionless innovation like never before, the company writes in the introductory material for the updated version. Companies can leverage Altair’s licensing system to seamlessly connect the Altair HPCWorks platform with the Altair One gateway to enable local clusters, “allowing that Altair’s technology portfolio including simulation, HPC and data analysis tools are at your fingertips.”
Altair One provides seamless access to its software, scalable computing resources and data from any device, whether you are in the office or on another continent. It is clear that in today’s challenging global economic climate, money and budgets matter. Here, Altair believes that its latest solutions make it easy for companies to access cloud resources without exceeding their budget:
”Users can work in the cloud, optimize a hybrid computing environment or split workloads at peaks – whether using an Altair workload manager, third-party scheduler or a mix of both. Quickly scale up and down with our integrated cloud automation engine to save your team time and money and get a single, centralized view of your organization’s HPC and cloud operations, even for multi-cloud and cluster deployments,” the press release states.
AI Integration and Streamlined Reporting
Aside from money and budgets, AI is a big deal for all software developers today, and Altair is no exception. ”Power AI workloads with HPC – and HPC workloads with AI,” the company says in a fun formulation, pointing out that the Altair HPCWorks platform’s new AI integrations simplify queue management and reduce wait times, and that integration with Altair’s relatively recently acquired RapidMiner data analytics and AI platform gives users smarter and more efficient scheduling. Altair’s HPC solutions are designed to support the technologies that AI workloads rely on, with broad support for GPUs and Kubernetes. Detailed HPC and cloud monitoring and reporting are now integrated into every Altair Workload Manager, giving IT administrators all the information they need to make informed decisions and optimize data resources.
Useful and important improvements, of course. A general observation in this context is that scheduling is key in sharing network resources fairly between users in a network, and it provides service guarantees to time-critical applications. In cloud computing, for example, according to S.P. Singh et al, 2019, an important purpose of scheduling mechanisms is, among other things, “finding the best cloud resources for upcoming end-user applications (tasks) to improve key performance parameters (QoS parameters) and improve resource utilization. The scheduling algorithm distributes heterogeneous workloads across cloud resources (VMs) based on resource capacity, overcoming the problem of overload and underload.”
Additional Highlights – How New HPCWorks Addresses Three Critical Industry Trends
More on the new HPCWorks: Altair further notes that the extensive enhancements to HPCWorks also include improved security, performance improvements, and integration with Altair’s advanced data analytics tools. Designers and developers can follow complex workflows, including AI and machine learning workflows, and work in any modern programming language. Flexible scheduling enables distributed workflows, and greater GPU scheduling capabilities help cluster administrators support chip design teams and get results faster.
Commenting on the new version of HPCWorks, analysts claim that the strategic platform improvements mark a crucial evolution in enterprise computing. The integration of AI-enabled job scheduling and support for GPU acceleration, according to STOCK TITAN, “directly addresses the explosive growth of AI/ML workloads, positioning Altair to capture a greater share of the rapidly growing $53.6 billion HPC market.”
It is further stated that the move to the Altair Units licensing system represents a significant change in the business model. This licensing arrangement is believed to lead to, “improved customer retention by reducing friction in resource allocation and scaling. The multi-cloud support and hybrid computing capabilities are particularly timely as enterprises increasingly demand flexibility in their infrastructure choices to optimize costs and performance.”
In summary, the STOCK TITAN commentator believes that the new HPCWorks well addresses three critical industry trends: 1) The convergence of HPC and AI workloads 2) The shift to hybrid cloud architectures 3) The growing demand for integrated analytics and monitoring capabilities.
Siemens is on to something interesting
Ultimately, this could accelerate Altair’s growth and gain market share for the company, especially among companies and organizations that prioritize AI and ML initiatives.
Siemens CEO and president, Roland Busch, and the company’s head oif the PLM division (Siemens Digital Industries Software), Tony Hemmelgarn, could be on to something very interesting if the $10.6 billion purchase of Altair goes through as planned.
