*puffing up chest* Audi and Intel.. Our headline today..
 

Audi Crash Testers No Dummies

Audi AG, Germany's oldest car builder and a high-tech leader in the automotive industry, is relying on Intel for the heart of a new crash simulation system it hopes will advance its safety standards while minimizing the need to destroy costly autos by the bushel.

Latest Intel Processors Comprise Heart of New Simulator - Intel Plans to Crash Audi's High-Tech Party

"Vorsprung durch technik," German for "leading through technology," is not just an idle corporate slogan at Audi AG, Germany's oldest car company and one of the most successful auto makers in the world.

The company is installing a crash-test simulation computer system based on state-of-the-art Intel processor technology to help determine the safety of its products without destroying cars that can retail for $70,000 or more.

Audi will use Intel® Pentium® III and Pentium® 4 processor-based servers in the first phase of a crash simulation system to optimize its car safety testing procedures. The first phase will harness the power of 52 Pentium III dual-processor nodes and 24 Pentium 4 processor single nodes.

Crash System's Second Phase
Plans call for a second installation phase that will see the introduction of an even more powerful infrastructure based on the latest Intel® Xeon^TM processor-based servers.

"We found the Intel Pentium 4-based servers offer a very attractive, absolute performance because of their high floating-point performance compared to traditional RISC-based systems," says Audi's Karl Huber, Computer Assisted Engineering (CAE) system manager. "The Intel-based cluster system has produced excellent benchmark results and, in terms of price to performance, is extremely competitive."

Audi says the massive computing horsepower available from the system will allow the company to simulate virtually any plausible crash scenario, allowing for the continual improvement of vehicle safety.

An Auto Industry Tech Leader
The technique is not new to the automobile industry, but Audi is generally recognized as a leader in applying computer simulation as a way to deliver high-performance automobiles. In 2001, the company won a coveted four-star safety rating for its A4* luxury sedan in the Euro NCAP crash test, thanks largely to advanced techniques in crash testing and simulation.

Audi is also regarded in the automotive industry as a tech leader in other areas, including advanced construction materials, four-wheel drive systems, and most recently the world's first continuously variable transmission (or Multitronic*, in Audispeak) that the company claims provides excellent acceleration while simultaneously preserving fuel economy.

okay..time to get back to work.. :)
<I wonder if I could get a transfer?>

Let's just hope they don't get the BSOD! =)

...

what OS? <stirs the pot>

Good Question.. I'll see if I can find out.

<sarcasm>Dude, NT rocks</sarcasm>....they better use a *nix OS....

you aren't the crash dummy.......

hopefully UNIX (for the sake of all future Audis!!)

windows 95---its the best crashtest dummy going!