A publication for the real-time computing industry ConcurrentSolutions Volume 16, 2014

GE Transportation Keeps Locomotive Concurrent Real-Time Strengthens Alliance Development and Performance Rolling with with Diamond Visionics Concurrent Real-Time Simulation

Concurrent recently renewed In the United States – and in countries around the world– railroads are important arteries its Value Added Reseller (VAR) for the economy. At the heart of the industry is GE Transportation, a global technology Agreement with Diamond leader and supplier providing freight and passenger locomotives, railway signaling and VisionicsTM, the standard in high- communications systems, and information technology solutions. performance geospatial visual simulation. The Challenge: Achieve New Levels of Performance Without Compromising Through the new agreement, Fuel Economy Concurrent Real-Time will sell and redistribute the Whether deploying freight or passenger Diamond Visionics family of trains, railroad companies must continually run-from-source-data Genesis meet new levels of safety, performance Visualization software products and fuel economy without sacrificing globally. power. These challenges are passed on “Our customers value Diamond to companies like GE Transportation who Visionics’ rich visualization manufactures locomotives that are software products on our delivered globally. ImaGenTM Visual Servers powered by our RedHawkTM The Solution: GE Transportation’s GE Transportation invested in HIL ® operating system,” notes Simulation, Modeling and Integration simulation to solve problems and Ken Jackson, Concurrent Vice Team (SimTeam) Standardizes on develop efficiencies before the metal President, Real-Time. “They can Concurrent Real-Time Solutions now benefit from an optimized meets the rail. end-to-end solution for the GE has responded with an investment ultimate high-fidelity visual in hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation experience.” A SimTeam engineer points out that diesel where many problems are solved and new locomotives are comprised of a large efficiencies are developed – even before number of electronic, electromechanical, the metal meets the rail. mechanical, pneumatic and operator controllers. The lab’s simulation It Begins with Simulation and Fault environments provide the necessary I/O, Injection plant and behavior models along with Dave Gdovin, Diamond Visionics’ scripted or user-induced fault injection President and Co-founder, Walk into GE Transportation’s Pennsylvania added, “Working more closely SimLab and you’ll see numerous complete to allow engineers to develop new with Concurrent Real-Time closed-loop HIL locomotive systems control algorithms, customer-requested gives us the opportunity to and subsystem simulators supporting enhancements, new products and expand our presence in the all locomotive product lines. All of these services. U.S. and abroad. It has also simulators leverage Concurrent Real-Time Continued on page 3 led to the development of an products. GE Transportation’s SimTeam innovative new product.” has created an environment to help its See related “ImaGen Powered by transportation engineers develop solutions GenesisIGTM“ story on page 4. to address a broad range of customer needs and rail operating environments. ExecutiveMessage

IN THIS ISSUE The Bridge to Success: Interoperability

1 GE Transportation keeps ™ locomotive development • SIMulation Workbench now supports ® and performance rolling modeling environments such as , VI-grade, SIMPACK, AMESim®, Dymola®, veDYNA®, MapleSim™, CarSim™ and GT-SUITE. No man or company is an island. We We have also added support for the On the I/O side, all work together to achieve success, environment-independent FMI standard with GE is now using and the level of success that we attain support for OpenMP to enable its parallel Concurrent’s new depends on how well we connect with processing mechanism. All of the models can CP-DA3218 other companies and their products. We interact together as well as with hand-written 32-channel, believe that providing an open system C, C++, and FORTRAN® models. In addition, 18-bit analog with commercial-off-the-shelf equipment SIMulation Workbench support has been output card in its provides the best solution with the highest complex simulation added for GenesisRTX from Diamond Visionics, ® systems. performance while maintaining the most rFactor Pro, and PreScan to provide the best interoperable platform. visual solutions for man-in-the-loop simulations. As systems become more complex, the 2 Executive Message component solutions must become more • RedHawk Linux real-time operating system tightly coupled with specific functionality version 6.5 offers an improved real-time 4 ImaGen Powered by to ensure the total system works once it is enhanced 3.10 Linux kernel with the GenesisIG fully integrated. As an example, when you CentOS™/Red Hat® 6.5 user environment, are simulating a car as a whole solution, and support for the latest Intel® and AMD® Concurrent one may want different software modeling motherboards and chipsets. Real-Time and packages for different parts of the car to Diamond Visionics optimize the simulation of the equipment. • SIGnal Workbench™ programmable signal LLC are unveiling ImaGen Powered by This might include different networks such conditioning, coupled with analytics software ® GenesisIG, a new as CAN or FlexRay to make sure that the from our technology partner EDAS, works 4-channel image interactions of the sub-assemblies do not with our own NIST-certified 24-bit Sigma- generation system interfere with the operation of another. Delta analog input board as well as any other for high-performance AI board on the market. simulation and As the complexity of the simulation systems training applications continues to grow, our customers look to • NightStar™ tools now offer advanced us to support multiple software modeling CUDA® 6.0 debugging features including the packages that can interoperate and support for concurrent and hierarchical 5 TechTalk: Parallel Processing communicate in hard real-time. Concurrent CUDA kernels. Alternatives Real-Time brings the best solutions together to share interdependent data and I/O on the Our business continues to grow and prosper 6 rFactor Pro Partners with same system, and we provide our customers because of you, our valued customers and Concurrent with an efficient way to pick and choose partners. We thank you for your continued the modeling software they need to get the support and offer our best wishes for another best results from their simulation. successful year. 8 Concurrent on the Move

As part of our continued support for - Ken Jackson, Concurrent Vice-President, interoperability and open systems, we have Real-Time enhanced the following products:

page 2 GE Transportation [continued from page 1]

The SimTeam originally developed the lab around Concurrent Power Hawk® systems with NightStar tools. With the introduction TM of new Concurrent iHawk multiprocessors Designed on simulators using Concurrent to natural gas on the fly. Natural gas running the RedHawk Linux real-time iHawk computers, Trip Optimizer is what the offers a significantly lower price point operating system, the SimTeam is increasing SimTeam calls “cruise control on steroids.” plus environmental benefits. Concurrent’s testing capacity and, more importantly, The application helps heavy haul railroad iHawk real-time systems are designed its overall test capability using more HIL, companies to efficiently run a variety of to accommodate simulation for that pseudo HIL and virtual platforms. trains on their rails. Trip Optimizer can evolution. virtually recreate a customer’s rail route – Taking Control, Reducing Risk mile by mile – accounting for a number of On the I/O side, GE is now using Concurrent’s new CP-DA3218 32-channel, One of the key benefits of GE factors that affect operating efficiency. 18-bit analog output card in its complex Transportation’s integration SimLab is its simulation systems. With twice the ability to provide an environment in which Staying on Track: Standardizing on number of channels as previous AO cards, locomotive and train control can be safely Concurrent Real-Time the CP-DA3218 allows smaller subsystem tested. Many customer use-cases center HIL test stands to be used for stand-alone around train safety operations. To reproduce GE Transportation began migrating its HIL and HIL system integration. The new these scenarios on real locomotives can simulation operations to Concurrent in Concurrent card fully meets National be a safety risk; therefore the simulation 1995. Since then, GE has standardized on Institute of Standards and environment is the proper place for safety Concurrent products including NightStar Technology (NIST) and failure mode testing. Controlled fault tools for debugging, scheduling and requirements for quality injection allows the SimTeam to duplicate developing model sets running in real- and dependability. the most hazardous and extreme operational time. According to a SimTeam engineering scenarios without putting the operator/ manager, “I have seen these tools evolve The Results: New Economies, test engineer at risk. As a SimTeam project over 20 years. They have been especially Better Performance, Increased manager touts, “That’s the beauty of helpful in optimizing performance, and they Safety cutting-edge Concurrent HIL simulation.” are intuitive and easy to use. In the hands of our senior engineers, there is a high degree Overall, GE Transportation has been TM _ of comfort in new application development GE’s Trip Optimizer able to reduce time-to-market while and in the training of new engineers.” “Cruise Control on Steroids” maintaining the highest manufacturing Overall, standardization on Concurrent Real- standards. The introduction of new, NIST- Due to the typical 20-year lifespan of Time products has provided consistency and certified Concurrent technology offers diesel locomotives, there needs to be a multi-generation support that has easily GE customers assurance of optimal way to optimize performance in response accommodated technology insertion and performance. And in response to ever- to emerging regulations, new customer new HIL features over time. This has saved tightening EPA and global requirements, requirements for power and fuel economy, time and money – with virtually no retooling. the simulation-designed Trip Optimizer and even changes in computer system application has helped GE customers platforms – without locomotive and system Getting Ready for Next Generation realize fuel savings of up to 17% downtime. Locomotive Design, Manufacture depending on type of service and rail and Operation topography. This leads us to a dramatic example of the power of HIL simulation – GE’s Trip GE Transportation is continually striving The effectiveness of GE Transportation’s Optimizer energy management system. to anticipate and meet new customer SimLab is a testimony to its approach Trip Optimizer is a fuel efficiency software requirements. One area of interest is to problem solving. In fact, at a time application that GE has built into its the use of liquid natural gas fuel. Like in when many companies are mandated own diesel electric locomotives, and will automotive hybrids, it is foreseen that the to do more with less, GE is increasing be designing for other manufacturers. next generation of locomotives will be its investment in real-time simulation able to switch power sources from diesel technology.

Visit real-time.ccur.com page 3 GenesisIG Features

Formats Supported

u Elevation: DTED, GeoTiff, GridFloat, Jpeg2K

u Imagery: ECW, JPEG2K, NITF

u Vectors: ESRI Shape Concurrent Real-Time and Diamond u Models: OpenFlight Visionics Join Forces to Deliver u Misc GDAL supported formats ImaGen Powered by GenesisIG

New Four-channel Image Generation (IG) System to be showcased at 60Hz Dynamic Construction ) Interservice/Industry Training and Education Conference (ITEC) u Elevation: Gridding and real-time modification At this year’s ITEC in Cologne, Germany, latest high-end graphics cards such as Concurrent Real-Time and Diamond the NVIDIA Quadro® K6000G. u Imagery: Filter, select, clip, Visionics LLC are unveiling ImaGen feather and contrast Powered by GenesisIG, a new 4-channel image generation system for high- u Vectors: Filter, construct and performance simulation and training attribution translation applications. Diamond Visionics Genesis is a family u Models: Scaling, construction Concurrent’s ImaGen visual server family of image generation software products and sprite generation offers flexible, multi-channel COTS- that provides real-time, CIGI-compliant based graphics platforms. ImaGen can rendering directly from GIS source data, u Lights: Size, attributes and be custom configured to address a broad including elevation, imagery and shape light pools range of price/performance requirements- files. GenesisIG takes advantage of the from single-channel systems to large, multiple cores on the ImaGen system to u 3D particles: Smoke, multi-channel solutions. ImaGen runs deliver smooth, high-fidelity real-time explosions, fires, wakes, rotor Concurrent’s RedHawk Linux real-time visualization. With GenesisIG, an entire wash, contrails, chaff and operating system and offers the industry’s 3D scene can be rendered on-screen flares

u Features: Pitched and slanted roofs on extruded buildings GenesisIG takes advantage of the multiple cores on the ImaGen system to deliver smooth high-fidelity real-time visualization.

page 4 at 60 Hz in real-time. Visualization is immediate and can be modified on-the- fly. GenesisIG also offers options for advanced physics-based FLIR, NVG, Radar and E/O sensor simulation.

Concurrent and Diamond Visionics partnered to produce ImaGen Powered by GenesisIG. It provides a truly unique solution to the training industry- a powerful 4-channel IG in a single, 4U enclosure. The new platform offers ultra-smooth rendering performance at Mach speeds while reducing cost, footprint and power consumption. ImaGen Powered by GenesisIG is also available in 1, 2 and 3-channel versions.

Ken Jackson, Concurrent Vice President, Real-Time, notes “GenesisIG software fully leverages Concurrent’s ImaGen 24-core platform configured with four Quadro K6000 cards at 4K resolution to provide a powerful and compelling rendering Parallel Processing solution. A major North American Alternatives aerospace company recently purchased ImaGen Powered by GenesisIG for a Parallel processing technology is widely used helicopter simulator upgrade.” by engineers in many fields of study including molecular biology, particle physics, cosmology, Dave Gdovin, Diamond Visionics medical imaging and financial analysis. Applications can run in a small fraction of the time President and Co-founder, says, needed to run them on a CPU. Today’s popular commercial alternatives are NVIDIA Tesla™ “The power of GenesisIG software GPUs supported by the CUDA SDK and Intel Phi™ coprocessors support by the Manycore allows you to ingest and run your raw Platform Software Stack (MPSS). Which solution is the better performer? It depends upon the GIS source data quickly. Our two application. companies recently announced a reseller agreement for Concurrent Real-Time to Tesla cards typically have ten times the number of logical cores as Phi cards. In applications sell and redistribute the Diamond where most of the code is parallelizable, the Tesla cards will outperform Phi. The cores on Visionics’ family of run-from-source-data Phi cards are actually multi-threaded Pentium® processors that are faster and more capable Genesis software products globally. than Tesla cores. In applications that have a mix of parallel and sequential code or cross-path We see this partnership as a win for dependencies in parallel code, the Phi is able to perform better. A third alternative for mixed- both companies as well as our case applications is today’s high-end CPUs. Standard Xeon® CPU cores are more powerful customers.” than Phi cores and have extensive SIMP instructions that can be used to process parallel applications. Conclusion -- a user needs to fully analyze their application’s behavior profile in order to make the best price/performance choice of this technology. For more information about ImaGen powered by GenesisIG Concurrent’s RedHawk Linux real-time operating system visit real-time.ccur.com or currently supports CUDA applications on Tesla and will diamondvisionics.com support Xeon Phi in RedHawk version 6.5. RedHawk includes the latest version of the NVIDIA CUDA SDK and will offer an integrated version of the Intel MPSS support package. Vince Hauber Director, Product Management

Visit real-time.ccur.com page 5 Concurrent Partners with rFactor Pro to Offer Unrivaled Driver-in-the-loop (DIL) Simulator Performance

Powerful new combination delivers real-time response and ) high-performance I/O for realistic simulation of vehicle ride and handling

Specialist software company rFactor Pro’s Technical Director, Chris Hoyle. Pro has teamed up with Concurrent “Effective real-time simulation is all Chris Hoyle Technical Director, Real-Time to provide new levels of about latency, the time between input rfactor Pro fidelity and realism in DIL simulation. and output. The combination of our The combination of Concurrent’s nearly software and Concurrent’s RedHawk 50-year expertise in hard real-time and SIMulation Workbench technology systems, and cutting edge Image provides minimum latency even when APleasebout send rFa me ac captiontor forPro this portrait Generator and TerrainServer software handling vast amounts of data. This when you can- thanks Lisa! from rFactor Pro, will provide OEMs and makes it possible to use DIL simulation T1 suppliers with a very powerful tool for studies of ride, handling, steering to reintroduce human test drivers into and safety systems.” the development process as they move RedHawk and SIMulation rFactor Pro is a specialist software more of their engineering to model- Workbench - a Comprehensive company that has developed driver- based development. in-the-loop simulators for vehicle Environment dynamics applications, offering the Fast High-bandwidth Solutions Concurrent’s SIMulation Workbench fastest video and audio pipelines, an for Highly-dynamic Maneuvers provides a comprehensive environment architecture for soft-real-time model for developing and executing real- execution and an optically correct Providing industry-leading DIL time HIL and DIL simulations. It runs off-platform vision system optimized simulation requires a platform that on Concurrent’s RedHawk Linux, an for motion profiles suited to ride and can host the manufacturer’s existing industry standard, real-time version handling development. This specialised model library in a reliable real-time of the open source Linux operating area of driver-in-the-loop simulation is environment. The solution must deliver all about closing the loop through the system for X86-based platforms. high bandwidth video to the driver driver and the vehicle model as quickly RedHawk is used in time-critical and and accurate, high-resolution road- as possible while delivering a high hard real-time environments such as data to the vehicle model in real-time. quality and immersive environment. modeling, simulation, data acquisition, Latency must be reduced to an absolute industrial control and imaging systems. minimum so that there is no perceived To deliver complete DIL simulators for RedHawk guarantees that a user-level the engineering development of vehicle lag between the driver and the vehicle. application can respond to an external dynamics, and the control systems By implementing fast, high-bandwidth event in less than 5 microseconds on and active safety systems that affect solutions, manufacturers can deliver certified platforms. vehicle dynamics, rFactor Pro works DIL test systems capable of simulating in partnership with motion platform highly dynamic maneuvers, such as Integrating rFactor Pro TerrainServer providers such as McLaren, Ansible those experienced when exercising and visual software with SIMulation Motion and MOOG. active safety control systems. Workbench allows the rFactor Pro The company’s products can wrap components to run in real-time and “This partnership enables us to around vehicle models from all the synchronize with the main simulation provide something unique to the popular modeling environments, loop that runs the high frequency simulation industry,” said rFactor including Dymola, SIMPACK, Simulink, vehicle chassis models. AVL-VSM, CarSim, CarMaker, LMS AMESim, VI-Grade and C/C++.

page 6 rFactor Pro’s software tool, TerrainServer, Jackson, Concurrent Vice President, Testing at the virtual proving ground. feeds high-bandwidth, high fidelity, Real-Time. “By bringing rFactor Pro’s cleaned LiDAR point cloud data for TerrainServer into our SIMulation each tire contact patch into a vehicle Workbench environment, we enable model in real-time and at up to 5kHz. the sharing of data points between By supporting multiple CPU cores, multiple models through a real-time performance can scale with the database. We also make it possible available hardware so even extremely to use models from different sources, demanding studies in the high- such as Dymola, SIMPACK or AMESim, frequency domain can obtain very high allowing customers to make full use of quality data in a timely manner. With their existing model library.” Concurrent’s RedHawk, all processor cores can be fully utilized. For example, DIL systems can also leverage rFactor

each tire model can have its own Pro’s Image Generator package that real-time all the time dedicated core, shielded from all other provides optically correct graphics events and interruptions for faster with each pixel positioned accurately response. within a fraction of a degree. The video signals are delivered 10 times

SIMulation WorkbenchTM Maximizing Existing Model Library faster than existing systems by using provides the backbone for the world’s most sophisticated simulators

a very high bandwidth bespoke video • Hard real- time performance • Support for industry- standard “The open architecture used by modeling environments ‘pipeline’ to ensure the necessary • Multiple models executed concurrently

Concurrent systems permits the 524028-2 Label.indd 1 response in real-time. • Multi- rate, multi-core support • Model- independent I/O mapping straightforward addition of a wide • Client (GUI) / Server (real- time) architecture range of software packages, meaning that customers can make use of their existing models,” according to Ken To learn more about SIMulation Workbench, download the brochure at real-time.ccur.com or visit the wiki.simwb.com.

Visit real-time.ccur.com page 7 A publication ConcurrentSolutions for the real-time ©2014 Concurrent Computer Corporation. Information subject to change without notice. Concurrent Computer Corporation and its logo are registered trademarks of Concurrent. All Concurrent product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of Concurrent, while computing industry all other product names are trademarks or registered trade marks of their respective owners. The registered trademark Linux® is used pursuant to a sublicense from the Linux Mark Institute, the exclusive licensee of Linus Torvalds, owner of the mark on a worldwide basis. RTlit - 0514 0514 3000

PRSRT STD US POSTAGE PAID 2881 Gateway Drive FT. LAUDERDALE Pompano Beach, Florida 33069 USA FLORIDA ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED PERMIT NO. 2358 Return postage guaranteed

CONCURRENT ON THE MOVE: , VI-grade International Users Conference, ITEC AND ITSEC

Over 350 participants from all over the world attended the Modelica Conference in Sweden, the main event for Modelica and the Functional Mockup Interface. In conjunction with Dassault Systems, Concurrent Real-Time presented its FMI/FMU solution with its integration into SIMulation Workbench.

VI-grade International Users Conference Concurrent Real-Time was a Silver Sponsor of the VI-grade International Users Conference in Pollenzo-Bra, Italy. Simulation engineers from all over the world in the aerospace, automotive, rail and motorsports industries shared their experiences in simulation, hardware-in-the-loop testing and controls. Concurrent also participated in a panel discussion on bridging the gap Concurrent’s Praveenkumar Ramesh between real-world testing and technical simulation in complex ConcurrentSolutions with Dan Henriksson, Senior Manager, engineering applications. Dassault Systemes (Dymola Developer) Concurrent Solutions is a newsletter at Modelica 2014. published by Concurrent Computer Corporation for the real-time computing industry. See Concurrent Real-Time later this year: Please direct content suggestions, comments or questions to the ITEC / May 20-22, 2014 Concurrent Solutions Editor: Cologne, Germany Stand F122 Lisa Thornhill: Senior Marketing ITSEC / December 1-4, 2014 Communications Manager, Real-Time Orlando, FL [email protected] Booth 2033 (954) 973-5103