How high performance computing could make Marussia F1 champion
With just £30m on the table, Marussia F1 did not have the luxury of renting wind tunnels for the 60 hours every eight weeks as allotted by the FIA [Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile – the governing body of F1 racing].
Instead, the team has invested the majority of its money in CFD or Computational Fluid Dynamics. This works as a digital wind tunnel, with software running a simulation of the wind and of the design of the car. It enables the engineers to see any weak points in the design and tweak the car accordingly, without having to have put it into production or without having to spend huge amounts on rent.
Marussia F1 has a 72 teraflop supercomputer to run the simulations. It is the 10th largest supercomputer in the UK, 230th largest in the world and by far the superior to any rival F1 team.