Simr is aiming to transform product development by bringing simulation best practices from the world’s top companies to ‘design engineers everywhere.’
LOS ALTOS, Calif.— Simr, formerly known as UberCloud, has enabled some of the world’s most innovative and successful manufacturing companies—including three of the seven tech companies known as the “Magnificent Seven”—to test and verify their product designs. In doing so, Simr has developed “a deep understanding of best practices for operating and automating design simulation processes,” the company said in a release.
Leveraging this knowledge, Simr recently introduced a set of best practices for operating and automating design simulation processes. The methodology, Simulation Operations Automation (SimOps), is described on the company’s website as a framework that “provides a structured methodology of best practices for optimizing simulation operations.”
By bringing SimOps to market, Simr said it is making best practices in computer simulations “available to design engineers everywhere.”
“Unlike traditional HPC (high-performance computing), SimOps integrates people, processes, and technology, streamlining workflows and reducing operational complexity,” the company’s website stated.
Simr is aiming to transform how engineers design, verify, and test products by automating sophisticated simulations in the cloud. It does so while eliminating the need to specify, procure, implement, and manage complex high-performance computing (HPC) environments. The company provides engineers with “a single platform for using any compute resources with any leading simulation tool,” according to the release.
The platform enables the implementation of SimOps best practices, reportedly boosting innovation and productivity among design engineers while enabling IT and operational control. Simr is closely partnered with leading simulation platform providers, including Ansys, Siemens, and Dassault Systèmes, the company said.
“In today’s market, leading products are complex and increasingly require system-level, multi-physics simulation,” said Wim Slagter, director of partner programs at Ansys, in the release. “This approach calls for robust simulation automation tools as part of our customers’ product design and simulation environments. For more than 10 years, Simr (formerly UberCloud) has critically provided our enterprise customers with these tools using the latest HPC cloud resources, ensuring they stay on the cutting edge of innovation.”
“Simr’s approach has given it valuable insights into the challenges faced by engineers and IT teams in managing cloud simulation environments and the untapped potential for enhancing the use of cloud resources in engineering simulations,” said Steven M. Levine, Ph.D., senior director, Virtual Human Modeling at Dassault Systèmes, and executive director, Living Heart Project, in the release. “The complexity of the HPC Cloud market can be a challenge for many, so a clear, streamlined approach like SimOps could truly be a game-changer for many.”
The company also reported that it secured $20 million in Series A funding led by Uncorrelated Ventures, with investments from BMW i Ventures and Earlybird Venture Capital. With the close of the new funding, Salil Deshpande, general partner at Uncorrelated Ventures, and Baris Guzel, partner at BMW i Ventures, join Ali Kutay, CEO and chairman of Striim, and Roland Manger, co-founder and Partner at Earlybird Venture Capital, on the Simr board of directors.
“SimOps has the potential to revolutionize how companies design complex, breakthrough products by letting teams iterate and test their ideas in the time they were previously forced to waste [while] waiting for simulations to be completed,” said BMW i Ventures’ Guzel, in the release. “SimOps gives engineering teams the power to explore more options faster and at lower cost. As manufacturing continues to evolve towards more digital and simulation-driven development processes, Simr is well-positioned to play a pivotal role in this transformation.”
“SimOps changes the way groundbreaking ideas become real products,” said Uncorrelated’s Deshpande, in the release. “The knowledge and best practices of the world’s largest and most innovative manufacturers become available to companies of all sizes. I’m excited to accelerate this process through an investment in Simr.”
The ability of engineers to innovate is a function of the speed, frequency, and quality of simulations that they can run. SimOps is said to make engineers more productive by letting them focus their time and attention on design decisions instead of managing compute resources. This accelerates the timeline to design and test products. Total time required for simulation is significantly reduced when configuring, deploying, scaling, and running automation, which can be done by Simr in any public, private, or hybrid cloud, the company said.
Engineering-driven manufacturing companies today are operating in global, highly competitive, and fast-paced environments. The need to provide innovation, breakthrough products, and superior value to customers is spawning ever-more complex engineering challenges. This is occurring amid an explosion in the variety and sophistication of simulation software variety, and the presence of nearly unlimited compute power in the cloud. According to Simr, SimOps is enabling companies to take advantage of greatly accelerated simulation quickly, securely, and reliably, in ways that place them at the top of their industries.
“One can’t develop products today without HPC modeling and simulation, and anything that makes running simulations easier is always greatly welcomed by designers, engineers, and researchers,” said industry analyst Earl Joseph, CEO at Hyperion Research and executive director of the HPC User Forum. “Moving forward, the ability to run simulations more quickly with less complexity and friction, and without limitations on computing resources, will separate the highest-performing engineering teams and the top manufacturing companies from the rest.”
Through its SimOps offering, Simr said it provides numerous benefits, including increased product innovation and reduced time-to-market. Using cloud HPC enables engineers to work with large models and detailed simulations that would be too complex and time-consuming for standard workstations. This leads to the rapid development of more accurate and effective designs, increasing innovation and helping speed the delivery of products to market, the company said.
Another benefit is uninterrupted productivity. Simr said it ensures a no-compromise user experience by enabling engineers to use any and all of their existing simulation platforms and workflows—including those from Ansys, Dassault, and Siemens—without any additional onboarding or configuration. This is said to eliminate reskilling and ensure that productivity is not only uninterrupted but accelerated.
SimOps is also reported to provide powerful security. The Simr platform’s implementation in the customer’s own cloud account enables IT teams to keep all proprietary data behind their corporate firewall, under their complete and exclusive control. At the same time, they can maintain direct access to their cloud provider’s full range of security and compliance mechanisms, the company said.
“Simr lets engineers design better products by giving them the ability to design and validate literally anything they can conceive of at previously unimaginable speed,” said Burak Yenier, co-founder and CEO at Simr, in the release. “As demonstrated by the traction we have with the world’s top companies and the support of our investors, there is a strong need for these unique innovations. SimOps is the much-needed new engine of manufacturing simulations.”