8: The Horsepower Behind Predator, Our Talk with Lenovo

Hello, and good day to you from episode 8 of our podcast series Project Breakaway, a metaphorical and literal time in the day when we here at Predator Cycling take some time away from working in the back shop to come and share with our listeners what we're doing, how we're doing it, what it takes to do it, our ideas, our innovative success stories, and even our missteps and failures. If you find yourself with an interest in bicycles, composite manufacturing, out of the box design, or even curiosities beyond, I encourage you to stick with us, settle in, and learn a little. I'm Courtney B., co-owner and project manager of Predator Cycling. I'm here with my partner Arm Goganian, the other co-owner, CEO, lead designer and engineer, and hardware guru of Predator Cycling. We're very excited to welcome our very first guest here on Project Breakaway, Chris Rufo, who is a global workstation lead of architecture, engineering, and product development with our friends at Lenovo. Hi, Chris. How are you today? I'm great. Thanks for having me, Courtney and Arm. Look forward to the conversation. Yes. Well, as a quick overview, Lenovo has graciously partnered with us here at Predator Cycling for the launch of their new Lenovo ThinkStation P620. We got our hands on this system pretty early on back in October of last year. We were one of the first testers for the Nvidia RTX A6000 GPU on one of our own workstations. Um, but however, that simply was just not capable of pushing the limits of the GPU. That's when Lenovo came in and we jumped at the chance to see what we could do with the system, the P620. So, Chris, can you provide us with an overview of the P620 and what makes it so powerful? Yeah, absolutely. The Lenovo ThinkStation P620 is a very uh, interesting product. We're very, very proud of it, very excited about it, and I think one thing we can say about the the industry in general is that project size and complexity is growing. It's not going project size project files, data sets, simulations, they're not getting any smaller. So, we saw an opportunity in the marketplace to uh, develop a product that's like a super supercomputer that sits on the desktop to cover a broad range of use cases for the manufacturing sector. Everything from rendering and visualization to simulations and analysis, multitasking, uh, you know, solid modeling, and everything in between. And I think what's exciting about the P620 is there's a few things. First, it's the first professional first and only professional workstation that supports the Threadripper Pro uh, chip sets. It's based around a PCIe Gen 4 architecture, which means that it's the only professional workstation that supports the new Nvidia RTX A6000 card that you just referenced, um, allowing both the CPU and the GPU to work together to allow maximum performance for a variety of different workflows. Now, the uh, P620 has core counts up to 64 cores. So, it comes in a 12, 16, 32, and 64 core configuration, depending on what uh, type of workflows that you that you're doing, um, up to 120 8 PCIe lines. There's 10 gig right on the motherboard. New 8 channel memory architecture, up to a terabyte of fast memory, uh, and like I said earlier, it's based around the PCIe Gen 4. The nice thing about the processor chip set is, you know, with with um, CAD, you know, you guys are doing a variety of different workflows, some of which require high clock speed for solid modeling, others require higher core counts and GPU capability for simulation and analysis, and the the frequency of the uh, processors in the in the uh, P620, they have combined very high clock speed with very, very high core count. So, it's it's kind of like a Goldilocks machine. Yeah, I was actually surprised because we have a 64 count um, core Threadripper, and I was very surprised that it was performing on par if not faster than our I have an overclocked water cooled workstation um, for CAD, just like some of my simple CAD modeling stuff. It was it's super impressive that yeah. It's a monster. It's great to hear, and you mentioned uh, water cooling in you in your other system. This system is all air cooled. It's designed and architected as a professional workstation to be air cooled. So, there's no water cooling required to it's going to run cooler, it's going to live longer, it's going to perform, you know, better over time, which is Yeah, it's actually it's pretty cool to see how that the the um the radiators and stuff on it are it when I opened it for the first time to put the RTX A6000, I was like, what? Like it's got like it's crazy. Yeah, when he opened it at home, he called me over. He said, you have to look at the inside of this. I was like, I'm not really sure what I'm looking at, but he explained everything. I was geeking out. I was like, what? Like I didn't even know what I I was yeah, it was pretty impressive. It was very impressive. Uh I know our engineers are tremendously proud of the the architecture that goes into building a system like this and it's it's very elegant. I I wouldn't I wouldn't compare it to your your bikes by any any stretch of the I But it's as best in in terms of getting something to perform in a certain way. Oh no, it's it's all I mean just you can tell when you open it up, you can tell that someone spent a lot or a team of people spent a lot of time figuring how everything goes together because even like the power management and like the the um just the cable management was just like it was very impressive. I was like it was very nice. Yeah. It is. Um I'm why don't you discuss a little bit how we use this system the P620 the system in our workflow? Yeah, I mean I think the big thing for us is I mean so we you know like most everyone that's listening is probably already knows our workflow pretty well, but we talk a lot about what we do as we we're designing, simulating, um even rendering constantly. Um and we used to basically schedule everything out. So we had, you know, in the morning we're going to do some simulation, in the afternoon we're going to do some CAD, and we would I mean literally schedule out our our workflow like in Google Calendars for the week. And if something happened in the middle of that, well, it just had to get moved around in the calendar. Um but now with the the P620, that's not really the case anymore um because like if I'm modeling, I actually have the the bandwidth to simulate in the background or even run renders or just I mean multitask simulation. Like I never thought that was going to happen. Um and so we've been able to do that and that's been a huge game changer for us. Um and even the the levels like we use discovery live quite a bit uh or now it's called discovery um from Ansys and the the the I don't want to say downfall, but one of the limitations of discovery is is hardware because it does live um uh simulation and it's relying on your GPU, but on our older workstation even with the RTX A6000, we couldn't put that big of a mesh file into the into discovery. So it would basically just the fidelity would go down and it would just shrink down the meshes on the P620 we don't have that problem. So we can actually now use um discovery for more simulation before we go off to Ansys Mechanical or Ansys Fluid. We we can use it a longer along the process, which is a lot quicker. It's just it's a really nice tool to use. So we use it all the time. Um so it's been interesting. It's totally changed our workflow. Um Mm. Yeah, it's completely I mean it's gone down from months to literally a week. Oh yeah. When we design something. Yeah. And what I was it's great to hear. You know, what we're seeing is that architecture the 620 um where all those parts are coming together, the you know, the faster bus, the PCIe Gen 4 connectivity between the graphics card and the processor is allowing you to maximize what you're doing in discovery. Um getting the most out of the the GPU. So that's great. I think our problem now is that I'm asking him to do more projects quicker. Uh that I would kind of tiptoe around before, but now I'm like, hey, you need to do both of those things today. Uh yeah. No, it's changed it's changed our workflow a lot. Like we have like um Courtney's laying up parts and you know I mean we simulate everything, we model everything out, but like we'll be in the process of laying up a part and a mold doesn't come out, you know, some of the the prep we we make little uh prep molds that to to lay up our chargers correctly and we 3D print them. It's they're not super complicated, but they help us a lot. And I'll overlook something of like how you're going to get the charge out or like a relief or something is overlooked and then Courtney will come back and like we need to like can you change this? Like we need an update and I'm like it used to literally take us a week to do that update. And now it's off to the you know CNC machine or the 3D printer like literally that afternoon. Yeah. I don't know yeah, that's such a big I will literally go to him in the late morning and say this is not working. I can't get the carbon out of this hole. I need something to help me and he'll design something real quick. We'll 3D print it and I usually just used to say I'll get to it next week and completely forget about that project that I was doing, but I'm literally working on it the next day. So we definitely expedited our process on some of these parts just in the last two months. Yeah. The other thing too is we're actually doing simulation now on things that we didn't do simulation on before. Like I used to not simulate some of our preps, like when we used to prep parts out, we do some warming stuff where we actually warm the tool up. I never ran thermal on it before. Um and now I'm actually doing it because it's not a big deal. It's like it takes 5 seconds. Um or like yeah, I mean even there's a lot of things that have changed especially like now our we're just getting ready for some updates to our website. And so it's just getting into KeyShot and I'm just doing some new renders and it's just like oh dude this is so easy. That's great. Great for your customers too to be able to see Yeah. what you guys are doing in time and make decisions you know without having to result in developing physical prototypes. It's they must be huge. tons of time. Oh yeah. Well even now like I'm so like on the RF 20 there's a couple things I've like probably overdid um but like some of how our drop out systems work and it's just like really complicated and I didn't know how to explain it to someone. So like I literally just took the CAD model, threw it into KeyShot, did a cut away and had it like it's a really cool image of the cut away of the rear hub, the hub assembly with bearings, cassettes, chains, derailleur and just cut the whole thing apart so you can see how the whole thing works. Um so it's just a really good visualization so I don't have to write you know an essay explaining the whole process. So mhm Pictures worth a thousand words. Visualizing worth a million. Yeah right. Yeah. So um let's get back to the P620. Um Chris what is the who do you think is the customer base for this this product? Cuz obviously we're a very small business, but what is the market for the P620? It it ranges. Um the exciting thing about it with changes in manufacturing additive um you know what you guys are doing makes you a prime candidate for the the P620 in in many cases because it's helped you shorten production times uh quite considerably by the sounds of it. Yeah. So you know small businesses, very small businesses looking to to um you know achieve greater efficiency uh where you're you're doing multitasking on a variety of different things is certainly one use case right on up to you know the most sophisticated automotive and aerospace companies doing um you know very very high end manufacturing doing the same types of things that you're doing just on a larger scale. Um they're using the same tools that you are. Uh they're doing the same things that you're you're doing just on a different different scale, different type of product and slightly larger teams and I think the most exciting thing for us is that we're a product that scales uh all all the way through you know now small businesses, very small businesses have access to the same technology that larger firms do and you can reap the same benefits sometimes even more than they can by using you know a high powered machine and you know there's just a a variety of different use cases. We've talked about rendering, we've talked about simulation and analysis. CAM is another one that's just highly you know it'll gobble up as much processing power as you give it to your your models. Um you know that and that's just manufacturing on the architecture side, factory um you know there's the whole world of reality capture where data captured through photogrammetry and lidar scans to be able to create digital twins or proto um digital twins of a product or a building so that you know the as built can be compared with the design specs and you have a living model of um uh what you're working on so you can actually understand how it's changing over time and how that can evolve to create a a more effective product in the in the in the future. So we see the use cases um tons of use cases. mhm And I think I feel like that's where we're headed in that direction with the digital twins. I don't think we ever thought we were heading in that direction, but now it just seems like Yeah. easier to get there now. Yeah for sure. I mean that's one of the things we've been working on because we've because we design and manufacture most of what we use even our equipment we've started data logging all of our equipment and cycling it and we're starting to now compare um simulated result that we do of the parts in our actual testing rigs. Yeah. So that we can do it because now it's like we've actually started simulating well since we have like for instance our automated press system that we built for the RF 20 um we designed and built the whole thing and we actually simulated it so now we can actually simulate the machine's performance against the actual mold with the actual composite structure inside of it and throw that whole thing in the Ansys Mechanical and see what happens. Yeah. And then now we're just I mean we're just what you're talking about with digital twins and we're now comparing the actual data versus the simulated data and seeing how close we are and trying to figure out where we did wrong or where we're you know what's happening and then how that's going to affect our testing and deflection testing on the bikes. Um Wonderful. That's great to hear. It'll be interesting to see your arc over time and how our powerful workstation helps you do things that you couldn't do in the past before. That's very rewarding for us as a as a you know a workstation manufacturer. Yeah and then I'm kind of curious though like with applications like outside like I mean obviously this computer is incredibly powerful but like what do you see it I mean in the past you were always I mean at least I was always told or and taught that you're using you know high clock speed low core count for design work and then you're using lower clock speed high core count for simulation work. Right. Now that gap is bridging and it seems like software providers are more and more relying on core counts for workflows. Do you see that the the P620 is going to like arc across all industries or is it going to be like heavier towards I mean when I first saw the P620 I was like this is aerospace I mean aerospace defense like I mean it's heavy simulation like scientific laboratories that are running crazy sims I mean that's what this thing was for but then starting to use it you're like no you could actually kind of use this thing for everything but I mean do you think it's going in one sector more so than another sector or you know we we see it going into all sectors uh I look into architecture engineering construction as well as manufacturing it's huge in media and entertainment uh as as the use cases around rendering and virtual production are tremendously demanding on workstation hardware you know in the last couple of years a few years things have revolutionized in the in the film industry where now directors can look through a camera uh onto a green screen and see their actors as they would in a final shot in a final scene Wow. through real-time rendering technology um you know driven through the hardware you know we see interesting use cases in in architecture as well around reality capture rendering um some simulation and manufacturing is I think the sweet spot in a lot of cases for for us around simulation analysis and multitasking doing precisely what you're doing so back to your original comment and question about clock speed versus cores now you can have your cake and eat it too with the 64 that you have it clocks up to 4.2 gigahertz turbo is up so if you're running in our solid modeling in Fusion 360 uh you can have you know maximum clock speed but if you're doing uh a simulation mechanical simulation in Ansys it will wrap up and use all of those cores um in conjunction with the GPU depending on uh which solver you're using and you can do all your video um content you could render in the background so no penalty to that that's that's like cool about this. Yeah. Um so Chris is the P620 a launching system for more on-site computation and what's next for Lenovo? Well um it it is this is the first iteration of the the P620 uh and it's something that will remain in our product line you know going forward and I know AMD is working on additional processors Nvidia is always advancing you know it's the first and only professional workstation in in the market so we're going to you know it's still very very new but it is something that's dear to our hearts and something that will continue to evolve um over time uh we have lots of things on the horizon some of which we just can't quite talk about yet um but I will say that we've learned a lot during COVID about what customers need work remotely and be effective customers like you small businesses large businesses world is moving mobile and you know we we hear feedback from customers around you know I'm teleconferencing all the time you know I'm I'm using my speakers more you know I need better plug and play I need more speed in a smaller form factor I need to be able to connect back to my office from a mobile workstation how can you help me right all of these things you know kind of go into a product development funnel and find their way into future products so we're excited and you know stay tuned there's some really things that are going to be happening in a soon to be I followed the leading question from arm that he slipped in there because he wanted to know what was coming out well as soon as we have something that we can announce we'll let you know okay great um what is next for predator with using this new software for us um I mean I think it's really opened up well I mean the biggest thing for us is been we have been chasing the concept of 3d printing production parts is something we've been chasing for a long a while we've been chasing this idea and we've designed I don't know 15 or 20 different variations of a couple parts trying to get it cost-effective um and when we got the p620 I thought it was like hey I should try this out again especially with the with the rtx a6000 and the p620 combo um and we actually figured out a way to cost-effectively 3d print a couple new parts um so I think it's gonna open up it's it's it's already opened up that entire market to us so we're gonna hopefully in the next couple weeks we're gonna be dropping one of our first parts and um it was interesting because we were able to run so many simulations back to back trying to figure something out we'd always been chasing this idea of lowering our material cost to 3d print something thinking that that was gonna make the price point work and like you know eventually these prices are gonna come down and it's gonna work when it's actually the opposite we actually new materials came out that were stronger and three times as expensive and we actually were able to use those materials and make the part by printing less of it um and make it more cost-effective in the lower-end products so it was just really interesting and you know my I didn't intuitively go there um but with running that many simulations I was like well let's just try it like I mean what's the harm you know I'm gonna go get a cup of coffee I could get the simulation done before I get back um so yeah and that opened that up to us and I think it's just gonna be the fact that now simulation for us is not a big deal like we can just run it it's not we're not thinking about it um because before we didn't have a supercomputer on our desk and we were relying on the cloud so we would be uploading stuff to the cloud and which was very cool and it scales and it does a lot of great things but you know we were getting results back in an hour sometimes two hours and and the cost is it gets expensive really fast I mean it's really easy to click the button and go it just it adds up at the end of the day um yeah it's interesting you know hearing your your feedback there a lot of people don't realize there's a cost to the cloud I didn't and and then I did and then I didn't want to use it yeah well there's also just like a mental thing of like I just I know that I have a budget and I can't exceed it and I know I got to watch how many times I click that button to solve something so like I would just in I just didn't run it that much I just ran it when I'm like okay I'm pretty sure this is it okay all good um and also though like for us it's it's I mean the systems we were using it's I mean at least five times faster to run it locally than it is to send it to the cloud by the time I send it to the cloud get my results get it back download it open it I had already computed it five times over so I mean it's just that's why I'm kind of like curious on what's gonna happen because it just it I mean in our experience with this setup we don't rely on cloud computing anymore I mean we just do everything locally so I'm kind of I'm curious for our workflow what is gonna change I'm sure we're gonna figure out a whole bunch of new things like next week so yeah the dog wanted to join us for this conversation um I think those are really good conversation about the p620 Um, Chris, I wanted to thank you and Lenovo for having a presence here at Predator Cycling and joining us today on our podcast and being our first guest. Pleasure. I look forward to to watching your your products develop and getting to see you in person next time we're in Nashville. Yes. Yes. Got to come for some barbecue. Wow, that was a great conversation. And we're really excited about our partnership with Lenovo. We've also shot a short customer profile video highlighting everything we discussed here today. And it will be available for your viewing pleasure here at today soon. And we'll post a link on all of our social medias. We thank you for choosing to take some time with us and we look forward to future breakaways. Look for us on Instagram and LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and in person here in Tennessee. We ask our listeners to share, like, and subscribe. We're available on all major streaming platforms. Thanks for listening. Have a good one and find some time to break away.