The roll-out of a new, in-house supercomputer by Continental will accelerate its development of technologies such as AI for automated driving.
“The supercomputer is an investment in our future,” highlighted Christian Schumacher, head of program management systems in Continental’s Advanced Driver Assistance Systems business unit.
“The state-of-the-art system reduces the time to train neural networks, as it allows for at least 14 times more experiments to be run at the same time [than the company’s previous system].”
The new machine is built with more than 50 NVIDIA DGX systems, connected with the NVIDIA Mellanox InfiniBand network which, according to Continental, is ranked as the top performing system in the automotive industry. A hybrid approach has been taken with the system architecture, meaning it is possible to extend capacity and storage through cloud solutions if needed.
“The supercomputer is a masterpiece of IT infrastructure engineering,” said Schumacher. “Every detail has been planned precisely by the team – in order to ensure the full performance and functionality today, with scalability for future extensions.”
The system has been operational in a data center in Frankfurt am Main since early 2020, with the facility accessible to Continental’s engineers around the world via remote connection.
