Lenovo announced the successful installation of a powerful supercomputer for AT&T Williams, now being used in the racing team’s wind tunnel simulation facilities in the UK.

AT&T Williams and Lenovo collaborated on the customized supercomputing solution, designed to optimize the aerodynamics of the team's Formula One cars.

"Aerodynamics plays a critical role in determining how competitive we are for each of the race circuits we visit," said Alex Burns, chief operating officer, AT&T Williams. "The optimum balance of downforce and drag varies between different circuits, so the aerodynamics at Monaco -- lots of tight corners with few straights -- are very different from Monza, which has few corners but lots of long straights. The increase in supercomputing power from Lenovo will give us the capability to examine a greater range of design variations between races, which will increase our development rate, bringing more performance to the car sooner."

Lenovo supercomputer at AT&T Williams

The supercomputer is being used for operations in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), performing billions of calculations that simulate airflow around a virtual model of a three-dimensional, on-track racing car. This process will help predict how even the smallest changes in component shape and placement will affect drag and downforce, with resulting impacts on speed and handling.

With a peak performance of eight teraflops (trillion floating point operations per second), the Lenovo supercomputer is four times more powerful than the team's previous solution. This will enable the team to speed up the process of aerodynamic simulation by approximately 75 percent.

The team uses the supercomputer to examine numerous aerodynamic variables, such as surface geometry, wheel turbulence and track surface. For example, the team can analyze the effects of adjusting the curvature of the car’s surface, with the goal of improving the generation of downforce and the reduction of drag.

The aerodynamic simulations are being done in combination with experimental techniques in the team's two wind tunnels. Computer-generated tests will enable the AT&T Williams team to focus resources on building the most promising solutions for testing in the wind tunnel and on track.