Case Studies > AGC Unleashes Potential with HPC in the Cloud

AGC Unleashes Potential with HPC in the Cloud

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Country

Japan

Product

Rescale’s ScaleX platform
Microsoft Azure Active Directory Services
STAR-CCM+
COMSOL Multiphysics
LAMMPS

Tech Stack

Cloud Computing
High-Performance Computing (HPC)
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Innovation Output
Digital Expertise

Technology Category

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms

Applicable Industries

Glass
Chemicals
Electronics

Applicable Functions

Discrete Manufacturing
Product Research & Development

Use Cases

Predictive Maintenance
Manufacturing System Automation

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
Data Science Services
System Integration

About The Customer

AGC, founded in 1907, is a global leader in the manufacturing of glass, ceramic, chemicals, and electronics materials. The company operates 210 companies globally and focuses on strategic industries such as mobility, electronics, and life sciences. AGC's mission and vision are forward-looking, aiming to overcome new challenges and continuously drive innovations that improve people's lives everywhere. The company turned to Rescale to extend its high-performance computing (HPC) resources to the cloud, transforming the way its researchers and engineers work with data, run simulations, use software, and fundamentally design innovation.

The Challenge

AGC, a global leader in glass, ceramic, chemicals, and electronics materials manufacturing, faced several challenges related to workflow and how users actively work with simulation tools and data. Sophisticated microstructure geometry designs needed to be modeled from the molecular-level up to the system level. These simulation models are very computationally-intensive and need to be performed continuously and across each step in the design and manufacturing process. Managing complex processes and workflows was further complicated by software updates. AGC uses a diverse suite of applications like LAMMPS, STAR-CCM+®, and COMSOL Multiphysics® to model different types of physics, and it was difficult to keep up with all of the software installation updates and maintenance. As a global enterprise with the highest security standards and requirements, AGC needed the solution to comply with the strictest IT policies, yet also simplify how users work with data and software tools and obtain resources. Other challenges included integrating security from the on-premise facilities to the cloud, minimizing data movement across the wide-area network (WAN) for hybrid cloud workflows, software licensing, accommodating complex, multi-step workflows, administration of policies, methodologies, software, and management tools, and future compatibility to enable breakthrough in areas such as machine learning and deep learning.

The Solution

AGC collaborated with Rescale to deliver an end-to-end multi-cloud platform for enterprise big compute and HPC that integrates on-premise workflows and technologies and securely extends HPC to their cloud provider of choice. The solution simplifies, optimizes, and enables AGC to control and delegate access to cloud resources through a single, universal, self-administering interface, the Rescale platform. The Rescale solution includes end-to-end security, flexible enterprise licensing, visualization in the cloud, hybrid cloud workflow optimization, and maximum scalability and flexibility for HPC. Users can choose where to run their jobs, either on-premise or in the cloud. In cases where users run in the cloud, they are immediately able to obtain massive scalability to reduce time to results for simulation runs and improve accuracy and simulation quality.

Operational Impact

Engineers and researchers are now able to quickly and rapidly run simulations faster—reducing time to results with improved accuracy.
AGC users process more data and adapt and refine models to adapt to new scenarios.
Users now have the flexibility to simply get the job done with the right tool, whether that be on-premise or in the cloud.
AGC uses the Rescale platform to give users the ability to create and innovate in ways never imagined.
The Rescale platform enables the AGC administrative team greater control to ensure resources are allocated most optimally and to the right users.

Quantitative Benefit