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Guessing they're not counting stuff at their flight sim training center (12 bays) as a 'data center'. There is zero % chance that the workloads supporting simul
by sithadmin 4y ago
Guessing they're not counting stuff at their flight sim training center (12 bays) as a 'data center'. There is zero % chance that the workloads supporting simulators are gonna run in the cloud. They're incredibly latency sensitive, extremely finicky, and just getting the stuff virtualized continues to be a struggle for aviation OEMs and flight training centers (though FedEx was a pioneer in this regard).
Granted, the footprint per sim bay isn't huge (1-2 racks, usually, sometimes 3), but it can add up at the larger sim facilities. Several of the major airlines are running 30+ bays simultaneously, with United poised to come in with the most at 40+ in the near future.
- dx034 4y agoThey have up to three racks for a flight simulator? I would've never thought they're that complex. Do they need that much computing power or is it other devices that are needed?
- sithadmin 4y ago2/3rd's ish compute, 1/3 other stuff from what I've seen. A good chunk of the compute are appliance-type boxes supporting simulation of particular embedded systems in a traditional environment. Most of the complexity comes from integration of these misc accessory systems. In general aside from the boxes handling the graphics projection, most of the 'compute' is idle a lot of the time, even when the simulator is running. There's usually a big burst of work to prep and load the simulation into the simulator, then minimal (but very latency sensitive) chatter back and forth between the various simulator components and the backend compute as the simulation runs.