High-performance computing software startup Rescale Inc. said today it’s offering an easier onramp for forward-thinking companies to adopt “digital twins” and build the foundation of the “industrial metaverse.”

What Rescale is doing is making it simpler for companies to build extremely realistic digital twins of industrial machines, which can then be tweaked and refined in the virtual world to test and implement new designs.

To do this, it’s working closely with Nvidia Corp. to enable customers to take advantage of graphics processing unit-optimized software that runs in any cloud. The company said it’s providing access to containers from Nvidia’s NGC Catalog, allowing customers to deploy more than 150 additional containerized artificial intelligence and HPC applications, plus hundreds of pre-trained AI models that have been optimized for GPUs.

The Nvidia applications have been added to Rescale’s existing catalog of more than 900 apps. With this integration, Rescale said, its customers will benefit from easier access to Nvidia’s Modulus neural network platform to enable AI-assisted engineering.

The infusion of AI ensures that its digital twins are physically accurate with true-to-reality physics, materials and behavior, Rescale said. That will allow customers to virtually test systems and layout changes and tweak their designs, without any system downtime.

Rescale founder and Chief Executive Joris Poort said the partnership with Nvidia helps it to provide a solid foundation for engineers and scientists to build digital twins and accelerate their innovations. “Working with Nvidia for technology development, go-to-market support and strategic investment, we are able to execute a vision for the industrial metaverse powered by accelerated computing,” he said.

Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said that what happens when you bring together two leading AI and HPC platforms is that you get better support for advanced AI use cases such as digital twins, helping to advance digital transformation. “This is what drives the partnership between HPC powerhouse Rescale and AI leader Nvidia,” Mueller said. “The winner is customers, who get better support for their AI-powered next-generation applications.”

Rescale cited the achievements of a marquee customer, Hankook Tire & Technology Inc., which is using digital twins to evolve its research and development strategy. Working with Rescale, Hankook Tire was able to automate its proprietary engineering software in the cloud by load-balancing across different hardware architectures and geographic locations. It said Rescale’s software allows it to prioritize the latest Nvidia GPUs available in Korea, while switching to other Nvidia architectures available in the cloud without affecting the work of its R&D engineers.

“Our decision to partner with Rescale is a huge step toward Hankook Tire’s true digital transformation,” said Bonhee Ku, Hankook Tire’s executive vice president and chief technology officer. “We are committed to evolving ourselves for the global mobility market.”

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