Rise of the Simulation Stack

Occasionally I write for design and engineering publications. This week Desktop Engineering published my article Rise of the Simulation Stack.

I checked Google just a second ago; the only instance online of “simulation stack” is in this article. Perhaps I’ve coined a useful term.

The introduction to the article follows. Use the link to read the complete article at the DE site.

Innovations in the design and deployment of high-performance computing (HPC) hardware and supporting middleware are paving the way to new services and opportunities to improve engineering simulation and analysis. Vendors and customers alike are finding ways to increase the number of simulations, spend less money and still get results faster than with traditional methods.

At the heart of this revolution is not one innovation but several, creating what could be called a simulation stack. You may be familiar with the software term “stack” popularized by the rise of open source software solutions that have become foundational in computing today. The best-known stack is LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP): four separate technologies that when used in tandem become a synergistic force that make today’s connected world possible. The emerging simulation stack is a trifecta of faster/cheaper/better, moving simulation further upfront into the design cycle and bringing to reality the often-prophesied “democratization of simulation.”

The simulation stack is still a fluid concept. The software and hardware varies from vendor to vendor. Elements include cloud storage and computation, HPC clusters, virtualization technology and the use of GPUs (graphics processing units), either specifically for graphics computation or for general-purpose computation.

Aircraft simulation, courtesy NASA.