The America's Cup: nerves, skill, and computer design

This year’s America’s Cup will be remembered for Oracle Team USA’s jaw-dropping comeback against the Emirates New Zealand boat (shown above), but it should also be remembered for the huge role computers have come to play in the competition.

The teams raced 72-foot twin-hull catamarans that are so fragile and finely tuned that they have more in common with Formula One race cars than traditional sailboats. They made this competition on the blustery San Francisco Bay both exciting to watch and dangerous for those taking part.

Long before the boats hit the water, the teams used powerful computers to model small changes in their design and extract maximum performance. It’s hard to overestimate the role computer-aided design tools have come to play.

Nick Holroyd, technical director for Emirates Team New Zealand, has been doing America’s Cup races for 18 years. In that time, he said in a recent interview, New Zealand has gone from “almost 100 percent physical testing,” where design changes were tested in wind tunnels and water tanks, to this year’s competition, which was “the first where we’ve done basically everything using computer simulation.”

In years past, he said, teams did three or four “tank sessions” a year, allowing them to test about two dozen hull designs. With high-performance computers, they can now test 300 designs in the same amount of time—and with greater precision.

Emirates Team New ZealandThe 131-foot wing sail on the Team Emirates New Zealand's entry in the America's Cup race

This year’s boat class was so sophisticated it’s not surprising that computers played such a critical role. The catamarans have a towering, 131-foot wing sail made from a lightweight carbon-fiber frame, covered with plastic sheeting only six times thicker than kitchen wrap.

The sail has flaps like those on an airplane wing that are adjusted to maximize performance, and the boats are at their most spectacular when they lift clean into the air and hydrofoil at speeds approaching 50 mph, held aloft on retractable keels, or “dagger boards,” that descend from the center of each hull.

In the run-up to the race, the teams make modifications to the shape of a hull or the size of a rudder and model its effect with computational fluid dynamics. They plug hydrodynamic and aerodynamic data into a velocity prediction program that shows the effect the change will have on the speed of the boat, its angle of heel and other variables.

”When you work in a physical tank, you can look at the wave patterns around a hull and you can get a really accurate drag number from the gauge, but it doesn’t tell you a thing about why one model is better than another,” Holroyd said.

The computer simulations reveal details like whether the drag is greater at the front or the back of a hull, aiding further optimization. As a result, the catamarans in this year’s competition were 30 to 40 percent faster than originally envisaged for their class.

For its design work, Emirates Team New Zealand used a cluster of Dell PowerEdge C6100 servers with six-core Intel X5670 CPUs. The system had 576 cores and 1.2TB of RAM, consumed about 35 kilowatts and, at the time was “the biggest system you could get in a single rack,” according to Holroyd.

Emirates Team New ZealandTeams in the America's Cup used software to model design changes to their boats.

The team did some test runs on an HPC at Cambridge University in England to figure out the most cost-effective architecture they could use. Their two main applications are memory-constrained rather than CPU-constrained, and they found they could get away with using lower-power processors.

They chose Infiniband over Gigabit ethernet to link the server nodes, which kept their software licensing costs lower. That’s because one of the team’s vendors had a “very nonlinear” pricing model, Holroyd said, “so it was cheaper to run a few jobs across a lot of cores than a lot of jobs on a few cores.”

All the teams had access to high-performance computers; Oracle used its own Exadata systems to design its boat, a spokeswoman said.

The computerized modeling helped the Kiwis come up with one important breakthrough in particular. It didn’t help them win the tournament, but the fact they figured it out early on in the campaign helped them move ahead with the design of their boat.

The boat design chosen for this year’s Cup was not intended to be able to hydrofoil. “They thought that would make it too easy” and reduce the importance of the skill of the sailors, Ross Blackman, a business manager with Emirates Team New Zealand, said last week.

But the Kiwis were the first to figure out how to design a dagger board and rudders that allowed their boat to lift out of the water, yet stay within the class rules. It was a change that required precise calculations and “a huge amount of modeling,” Holroyd said. When the 6-ton catamaran gets close to top speed, the pressure on the “suction” side of the dagger board is so low that water “boils” at the point of contact, creating vapor, he said. That causes drag and is also quite dangerous.

After New Zealand figured out how to make its boat hydrofoil, the other teams had to follow suit. By then, the Kiwis could focus more attention on other areas of their boat.

But this year’s contest showed that nerves and psychology are as important as who has the best boat. At one point last week, New Zealand was leading Oracle by seven races and needed only one more for victory. Oracle Team USA won eight races in a row to pull off the biggest comeback in America’s Cup history.

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Peak Design CapturePro

Pros Solid construction. Choice of quick release plates. Doubles as a tripod quick release. GoPro add-on kit available.

Cons Doesn't play well with larger lenses or battery grips. Not as convenient as a sling strap. Bottom Line The Peak Design CapturePro Camera Clip lets you secure your camera to a belt loop or backpack strap, but it's not useful for longer lenses.

By Jim Fisher The Peak Design CapturePro ($79.99 direct) is an innovative accessory that allows you to secure your camera to your belt or to a strap on your backpack or camera bag. The rear of the clip is removable, so you can latch it onto the belt or strap and secure it with two thumbscrews. It's useful for shooters who use a D-SLR without a battery grip, or a smaller mirrorless camera, but the design doesn't lend itself to for use with tall cameras or big lenses. It's a neat concept that will appeal to hikers and anyone who is tired of tangled straps, but if you regularly shoot with big lens, you may find a sling strap like the BlackRapid Curve to be more comfortable.

The CapturePro is constructed from aluminum and attaches securely via two thumb screws. A quick release plate is included—you have your choice of one that is compatible with Arca tripod heads, one that works with both Arca and Manfrotto, or one that is smaller in size for use with mirrorless cameras. Our review unit shipped with the Arca plate, which is square so that it can be inserted in any orientation, but the other plates are rectangular and can only be inserted so that the long side is parallel to the bottom of the clip. The rear plate has a tripod thread, so you can mount it; if that's a feature that you don't need, there is also the less-expensive Capture ($59.99). It can't mount to a tripod itself, lacks an all-aluminum design, and is only available with an Arca quick release plate.

I used the CapturePro with a couple of different cameras. It paired well with the Canon EOS 6D with a 50mm prime; I opted to attach it to the strap of my Crumpler Six Million Dollar Home camera bag. I was happy with the way it balanced against my chest, but I'd be wary of using it with a 70-200mm or larger lens, and I wouldn't dream of pairing with the monster Sigma 120-300mm F2.8-DG OS HSM. The clip itself holds the camera very securely, but if you've got it attached to your backpack or camera bag strap, the movement of those straps are going to be an issue, and if you opt for a belt mount you'll only have to contend with your legs.

I wouldn't recommend using the clip with a Nikon D4 or another big SLR with a vertical shooting grip; those are a bit too tall and will rock up and down when you move. I actually had the best experience using an old 35mm SLR, the Nikon F3, and a 50mm prime. That camera is squatter than modern D-SLRs and stayed relatively still. Peak offers the PROpad accessory ($20), a pad that acts as cushion and a more robust mount for the clip itself; if you plan on using the clip with a big camera or lens, it's likely going to make your life easier. Action cam fans should consider the POV Kit ($20). It's an add-on that makes it possible to mount a GoPro or similar camera directly to the plate, so you can use it as a body mount for recording footage.

If you're a fan of the idea of clamping your camera to your body, the CapturePro is a good way to do so. How much it moves when you do is going to depend on your body type; I found that mounting on a belt wasn't an option, but slimmer shooters may find that to be the most comfortable choice. I think a sling style strap like those from BlackRapid is a bit more versatile. It makes it easy to bring the camera up to your eye for a shot in one motion; you'll have to depress the release and remove your camera from the CapturePro in order to do the same. But a sling strap gives your D-SLR room to bounce around at your side, where the clip secures it closer to your body, which is a better option when navigating the uneven terrain that outdoor photographic enthusiasts encounter when hiking.

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Lapsing of Moore's Law opens up opportunity in chip design

As the trend famously codified by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore—that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every two years—seems to be flagging, one top engineer suggests that it is time to rethink chip design to buy performance increases.

Instead of just focusing on reducing chip size and cranking up processor speeds, engineers need to look at making tweaks or possibly even change fundamental microprocessor architecture to ensure chips are faster and cheaper to produce, said Robert Colwell, director of the microsystems technology office at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), in a talk on Monday at the Hot Chips conference in Stanford, California.

Colwell dismissed arguments that Moore’s Law will continue to hold, and said engineers should give serious thought to the design and economics of chip making.

Robert Colwell, director of the microsystems technology office at DARPA

“I pick 2020 as the earliest ... when we can call it dead. That’s only seven years away,” Colwell said. “I’m thinking 7-nanometers. You can talk me into 2022, you might be able to even talk me into 1-nanometer. But you’re not going to into 1-nanometer... I think physics dictates against that.”

There have been different interpretations of Moore’s Law, with the most common one being that the number of transistors on a chip will double every two years, which will make chips faster. But Colwell tried to clarify the definition, saying that in 1965 Intel’s Gordon Moore focused more on the economics related to cost-per-transistor, which would drop with scaling.

“What it really is ... if you’re going to integrate a lot of components on a chip, there’s an optimal place on that curve where you should do that. You can go beyond the optimal point, but it will cost you in terms of price per component,” Colwell said, adding there’s a sweet spot where maximum profit can be eked out assuming sales are relative to the number of chips made.

It is true that beyond a certain geometry it will hard to make chips smaller, but Colwell said economics, and not physics, would ultimately end Moore’s Law. The day chip makers can’t get return on the billions invested in making chips smaller is the day Moore’s Law will break. Instead of waiting for chip economics to crash, innovation should start now.

Chips now have billions of transistors, and the ability to push clock speed and performance will reached its limit, and after silicon engine stalls, small tricks and incremental tweaks like power gating and turbo will happen for a short time to improve chips. But chip designers should start early, and an effort like changing fundamental chip design could help before and after Moore’s Law ends.

One approach to consider might be separating the instruction set architecture, microarchitecture, circuits, functional blocks and other parts now integrated onto a chip, and tweaking them for specific applications, Colwell said.

“I think the end of Moore’s Law opens the door to designing special-purpose things again,” Colwell said, adding that in the 1970s, one could make specialized floating point arrays with vector processors. DARPA is doing research in the areas of quantum computing, nanotechnology and distributed computing, he said.

Researchers at universities and chip companies are also looking at new materials to replace silicon, and also advanced manufacturing technologies. Colwell said that the new technologies are far from practical implementation, and chip makers will have to rely on technologies like CMOS, which has no practical replacement in sight.

“CMOS is really good stuff,” Colwell said. “There are [only] two or three [new technologies] that are promising at all. It’s just hard to beat CMOS.”

Some ways to buy performance in the meanwhile could be through the use of new materials, photonics, optics and 3-D stacking, in which transistors are placed on top of each other.

Outside of the computer industry, the auto industry will feel the biggest impact of the end of Moore’s Law, Colwell said. The last 30 years of innovation in cars such as navigation systems, antilock breaks, guidance systems and others have all been driven by semiconductors.

“I think that’s really cool but all of it is based on computers. If we stall out, what are they going to do differently from generation to generation?” Colwell said. “I think they have been living off the electronics for the last 20 to 30 years, and if we don’t continually feed them huge increases, it’s not clear what they will do next.”

Colwell also threw a dart at his former employer, Intel, where he was the chief architect for all Pentium chips.

“Intel is terrible at anticipating. They don’t look down the road and say ‘five years from now the rules will be different, I need to react today, I’m going to put some bets on the table’. There’s some of that, but not a lot. But what they are really good at is reacting,” said Colwell.

Agam Shah is a reporter for the IDG News Service in New York. He covers hardware including PCs, servers, tablets, chips, semiconductors, consumer electronics and peripherals.
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SAP creates LAVA 'design language' to heat up analytics

SAP’s Business Objects BI (business intelligence) product line may soon begin receiving a visual overhaul based on a new “design language” or methodology called LAVA (Lightweight Applied Visual Analytics).

There are six design principles within LAVA, according to a recent post on an SAP blog.

One is “lean appearance,” where analytic applications have a “clean, minimal display style that focuses on the data itself versus on irrelevant faux decorations like gradations, drop shadows, or reflective surfaces,” according to the post by Anita Gibbings, director of BI solutions marketing.

LAVA also introduces “points,” or “mini-charts” that deliver information in bite-sized pieces. “Think of them as chart tweets,” she wrote.

A related concept is “channels,” which are “simple containers for displaying and navigating to multiple Points and Charts”; and “boards,” a type of dashboard. “Initially these will be simple containers for Channels and free-standing charts, and will be expanded to provide templates suited to known analytic consumption purposes,” according to the post.

LAVA’s fifth element involves “lattices.” These are “multi-layer, manipulable bar chart[s], enabling user-driven drill-down filtering and other operations,” according to the post.

Finally, LAVA employs what SAP calls “Sn@p Navigation,” which “enables the fluid creation and curation of visual analytic environments and collections,” Gibbings wrote.

The question now is how quickly SAP manages to fully enmesh LAVA within Business Objects.

An initial step has already been taken, according to Gibbings. “Lean appearance is now the default for SAP visual analytics,” she wrote. Some additional details could be released in “a month or so,” she added.

That time frame coincides roughly with SAP’s annual Business Objects user group conference. Further details couldn’t be obtained from SAP on Friday.

One SAP BI expert praised LAVA, saying the approach will help tackle today’s analytic challenges.

“The tools we have [in Business Objects] are extremely powerful and really good at visualizing data,” said Greg Myers, analytics architect and member of the SAP Mentor program for especially involved community members. “What they’re not so good at is visualizing vast amounts of data. That’s where HANA and LAVA come into play.”

HANA is SAP’s in-memory database platform, which has become the central pillar of its software development efforts.

LAVA’s design principles, which emphasize cleaner and simpler ways of getting at data, are also a response to the rise of mobile devices, Myers said.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for the IDG News Service.
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