TAE SUNG S&E lifts customers’ productivity with AWS

TAE SUNG S&E, INC.

The Challenge

To use computer-aided engineering (CAE) software, TAE SUNG S&E's customers needed to build and operate high-performance computing (HPC) clusters to process complex, large-volume engineering simulation tasks. Scaling up HPC infrastructure can become wasteful during lulls, but if resources and software licenses aren’t sufficient during busy periods then productivity is reduced. It also takes considerable time to get software license quotations, complete the internal purchasing process, and order, install and configure hardware.

Anticipating that the cloud will play a major role in overcoming these challenges, TAE SUNG S&E began preparing for a new cloud-based business in 2017. "Calculating the simulation speed-up is very important. The larger the number of processor cores there are, the more advantageous it is,” says Jaehwan Jang, New Business Development Division Manager. “However, HPC environments have high initial investment costs and long deployment times, so we decided Amazon Web Services (AWS) would be beneficial to us and our customers."

In addition to hardware, AWS also addresses CAE software licensing challenges. There’s no reason to license unnecessarily, and major CAE software follows core-based licensing so higher core performance means lower licensing cost. Hardware must be up-to-date so it’s usually replaced every three to five years, but this cycle doesn’t take advantage of the performance benefits of the latest processors. AWS Cloud has no such restrictions. Companies can enjoy the performance of the latest processors while reducing software licensing costs and lowering HPC deployment and operating costs.

“With AWS, we had the performance we wanted in two days,
rather than a month for lower performance with other providers.”

Jaehwan Jang,
New Business Development Division Department Manager,
TAE SUNG S&E

  • About TAE SUNG S&E

  • Established in 1988, TAE SUNG S&E is a Korean computer-aided engineering (CAE) software and services company. It supplies CAE software—such as ANSYS—to customers across multiple industries, including aerospace, automobiles, civil engineering, biomedicine, shipbuilding, electrical, electronics, metals, semiconductors, energy, defense and chemicals industries. Each year, it performs more than 100 consulting services and operates over 60 CAE software training courses for 5,000 graduates. By diversifying into consulting, education and publishing, TAE SUNG S&E has become a complete CAE-related services company.  

  • Benefits
    • 75% lower customer costs
    • Fast entry into market
    • Raised business productivity
    • Increased customer demand
    • Enhanced user satisfaction
  • AWS Services Used

Why Amazon Web Services (AWS)

TAE SUNG S&E designed its eTSNE Cloud service to provide HPC infrastructure and CAE software on demand. There are two modes, batch and Windows. The customer’s CAE engineer can perform the simulation in three steps. First they access the eTSNE site and choose their desired software. Then they choose the hardware type, number of cores, and estimated simulation time. Finally, they upload the file to be simulated.

"Performance is very important to support smooth engineering simulation. Each node in a parallel cluster must have a high network speed. There should be no network latency,” says Duhwan Lee, Development Division Department Manager. “In addition, for government funded engineering projects regulations state that the data centers must be in Korea."

With performance a top priority, TAE SUNG S&E conducted proof of concept (PoC) projects with several cloud providers. "With AWS, we had the performance we wanted in two days, rather than a month for lower performance with other providers," Mr Lee says.

TAE SUNG S&E used Amazon RDS for MySQL with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), and Amazon EC2 to develop and configure eTSNE’s user portal service and simulation environment simultaneously. It also applied Amazon CloudWatch to monitor the parallel computing environment. This allows users to easily select the software they need, such as ANSYS, ROCKY and DAFUL, choose the hardware environment, and upload the simulation file in the portal.

Taesung S&E launched its eTSNE Cloud service in June 2018, and the number of subscribers has steadily increased. Large companies are interested in the eTSNE Cloud service because they can run and scale CAE software flexibly, making it an effective way to increase productivity and reduce costs. "Large companies require very high performance for engineering simulation, such as a 3.0GHz processor, 512GB memory, and an InfiniBand-class network speed. With Amazon EC2 z1d Instances, we can deliver the desired performance for our customers," Mr Jang notes.

The Benefits

TAE SUNG S&E is opening up new business possibilities with AWS, allowing it to expand from CAE software supply, consulting, training and publishing into cloud services, and eTSNE Cloud services is expected to become its future growth engine. "AWS Cloud solved the performance constraints of traditional HPC environments. In addition, major CAE companies are reducing their software-related costs by introducing cloud licenses. As a result, companies can now economically use CAE software on demand,” Mr Jang says. “In terms of CAE software supply vendors, this isn’t a reduction in the existing software market’s size, but rather an increase in software supply. We are working on more simulation tasks in the same time period, which increases software usage."

In fact, universities and businesses using eTSNE Cloud services experience faster performance and lower costs. Because it uses the newest hardware and the latest versions of software, engineering simulation tasks are more productive and efficient.

"Customer’s cost savings from using the AWS-based eTSNE Cloud service average 75%. Plus a high-performance computational environment optimized for CAE software allows more tasks to be performed within the same time frame, increasing productivity. For example, the KEPCO International Nuclear Graduate School has reduced costs to a fifth of the expense of building a server, allowing students to work freely without having to wait for their turn," Mr Jang observes.

The improvements in productivity have attracted attention from business leaders too. With eTSNE Cloud, engineers don’t have to compete for limited resources and simulation work can be tailored to desired performance, improving the productivity of individual engineers and the overall business workflow. "Not only engineers, but C-level executives are positive about cloud services like eTSNE Cloud," Mr Jang says.

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