Foundational studies of desktop-bound technical computing users, referred to as the missing-middle of the high performance computing (HPC) market, have identified the lack of simple software, limited access to technical talent, and difficulty in estimating the return on investment (ROI) as critical challenges in the adoption of HPC among small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The complexity and rigid organizational structure of these tools are a mismatch for companies that traditionally rely on shared tribal knowledge and follow an artisan process of physical experimentation rather than digital simulation. The proposed solution is to develop a commercial a turnkey HPC solution that enables an artisan process of digital experimentation more appropriate for the missing middle manufacturing. Nimbis Services will partner with the University of Southern California to develop a turnkey HPC service for small and medium-sized engineering and manufacturing firms based on Wolfram Research recently released component flow based SystemModeler and Mathematica for interactive visualization and statistical analysis hosted on the Nimbis ecommerce on-demand technical computing marketplace. Commercial Applications and
Benefits: The SMDAE will enable small and medium sized U.S. companies to access on-demand pay-as-you-go HPC systems and software that reduces the up-front investment required for manufacturers to experiment with HPC- driven modeling and simulation and allows these companies to gradually increase their investment in technology as they see a return. On-demand access to scalable high performance computing and revolutionary system-level modeling and simulation tool SystemModeler combined with easy-to-use front-end capability in Mathematica gives small and medium-sized firms the same competitive advantage currently enjoyed by large corporations that have the resources to sustain an in-house digital manufacturing enterprise.
