POWER PLAY

摘要

Chrysler Group's recent hits―the Neon, Se- bring and PT Cruiser―are models of affordable style. Sure, they lack the world-class engineering of the Mercedes made by parent company Daimler-Chrysler AG. But they've got some snap, do the job, and no one balks at the price. Same goes for Chrysler's Auburn Hills, Mich., data center. The automaker's most demanding applications―for simulating crashes, road noise, and aerodynamics―run on high-performance computers made from off-the-shelf RISC chips and clusters of Pentium- and Itanium-based PCs. They're maybe half the speed of the traditional Cray supercomputers they replaced but cost pennies on the dollar compared with the Crays. "We're doing our part" to help Chrysler cut costs, says John Picklo, high-performance computing manager.