Bespoke Dell Precision T5500 renders F1 engine

The Dell Precision series is an integral machine, used by global creative experts and engineers alike. Unsurprising when you consider its new Intel Xeon architecture and up to 72GB of DDR3 Registered ECC memory – offering high performance, power and scalability at comprehensive prices. Now the family’s T5500 series compact powerhouse is being used to visualise F1 engine design, and the machine has met praise from the media and teams within the F1 paddock.

Dell customer Cosworth (www.cosworth.com), leading provider of high-performance technologies in a diverse range of industries including aerospace, defence, energy, marine and automotive, currently works alongside four independent teams in the 2010 FIA Formula One Championship.

A crucial part of Cosworth’s communications programme is the development of high-quality visualisations of the engines and high-performance electronics that it supplies, which enable Cosworth engineers, customers and fans to see the complex designs in a visually clear and accurate way.

To create these photo-quality digital images, Cosworth worked with Dell and AMD to select a bespoke Dell Precision T5500 workstation system configuration, including two Quad Core Intel Xeon Processors and ATI FirePro v8800 1GB graphics card supporting Eyefinity technology. This workstation hosts 24GB RAM with the option to upscale to 72GB. The T5500 was configured with AMD’s ATI graphics card to specifically address Cosworth’s need to work across three screens – this allows for a faster and highly efficient workflow when manipulating 4,000+ components that make up one visualisation of Cosworth’s latest CA2010 engine design.

Essentially, using this bespoke T5500 for rendering allows the business to market and display engine designs in lifelike accuracy, with the machine providing this graphics support alongside immense processing power, which has directly impacted the speed and quality of producing renderings.

To see the machine in action, check out the video below:

http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/Direct2Dell/b/direct2dell/archive/2010/08/09/cosworth-drives-f1-engine-rendering-with-dell-precision.aspx