Supercomputing to Quiet Aerodynamics Whisper Aero of Crossville, Tennessee supercomputes its way to grand new designs. Affiliating with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the powerplant designer and manufacturer uses the Lab’s supercomputer to investigate the most desirable aerodynamic approaches. The ORNL is working with Whisper on a nine-passenger electric airplane called the Whisper Jet. The collaborators will employ the world’s fourth fastest supercomputer, Summit. (It was the fastest until recently). According to ORNL, access to Summit and its graphics processing unit (GPU) architecture gives Whisper Aero’s team a tenfold speedup over Whisper’s in-house CPU (Central Processing Unit)-only systems. It enables advanced simulations compared to previous systems. Vineet Ahuja, Whisper Aero’s Head of Flight Sciences and an Associate Fellow at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, says, “Using Summit affords us the possibility of expanding the scope of Whisper’s design and analysis activities that benefits aircraft control and aeropropulsive integration, As a result, aerodynamic design has shown an incredible …
