Operating in the WinTel Environment

Transforming the Manufacturing Enterprise

New business solutions based on service-oriented architectures and high-performance Intel® technologies are helping manufacturers synchronize operations with key business partners, accelerate time-to-value, reduce costs and accurately match production to demand.

New Solutions Transform Manufacturing
Innovative manufacturers around the world are beginning to deploy new Web services-based business solutions to accelerate design cycles, improve product quality, synchronize global supply networks, reduce capital costs and improve after-sale service. Made possible by continuous advances in processor technology, the convergence of computing and communications, the standardization of service-oriented application architectures and the advent of mobile computing, these transformative solutions streamline and accelerate existing business processes, enabling entirely new methods of operation. The combined impact on organizational efficiency, asset utilization, and responsiveness puts adopters a generation ahead of the competition.

What is a Transformative Solution?
Transformative solutions integrate people, processes and technology across departmental, enterprise, geographic and compute environment boundaries, in ways that significantly compress, simplify and accelerate the overlying business operations. They replace the delays and uncertainties of manual transfers and batch reporting processes with policy-based, event-driven automation, pushing real-time data directly to decision makers throughout the organization. Transformative solutions derive their power and performance from open standards-based building blocks and technologies that simplify enterprise integration and help companies put the right information in the right hands at the right time.

Foundation building blocks of transformative solutions include:

• Advanced service-oriented architectures that simplify enterprise integration and accelerate existing processes, enabling real-time data aggregation and workflow automation
• Federated environments based on new models for resource allocation and processing execution, including Grids and utility computing
• Wireless networks, mobile platforms and mobilized software that extend the application and data tier to the client device, enabling data capture, access and analysis by any employee, at any location and at any time
• Balanced, distributed, cross-architecture compute platforms powered by advanced Intel® technologies, including:

Transformative Solutions Extend the Enterprise
Transformative solutions connect and extend the enterprise by eliminating stubborn inefficiencies that originate in communication gaps between internal business units, external partners, and their respective compute environments. By bridging those gaps with an open standards-based framework that integrates applications, workflows and data, these solutions enable real-time collaboration and process integration across global production networks. They shorten design cycles, accelerate new product introduction, lower production costs, reduce waste and scrap production, synchronize production to real-time demand and improve product support. The return on implementation investment is swift and continuous.

Transformative solutions take advantage of existing systems, extending their value and functionality without the expense and disruption of complete replacements. They provide a reusable and highly scalable integration infrastructure that simplifies organizational expansion and future application development. Adoption is gaining speed for the simple reason that these technologies provide their users with significant and immediate competitive advantage.

The Opportunities in Manufacturing Transformation
Collaborative Product Development
Transformative Collaborative Product Development (CPD) solutions help companies manage, coordinate and expedite the activities of distributed virtual product design teams that may include multiple supplier tiers, contract manufacturers and other business partners. Transformative CPD solutions bring together all the tools and infrastructure required to enable real-time collaboration, regardless of distance. They provide shared design applications, product lifecycle management (PLM) services, policy-based workflows and collaborative workspaces. CPD solutions accelerate new product introduction cycles, elevate user productivity, improve product quality, reduce development and production costs, maximize market share and increase lifecycle revenue.

Transforming Product Development
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Solutions from IBM and Dassault Systemes is a comprehensive set of collaborative product design and lifecycle information management in a globally distributed environment. Key solution components include:

• A multi-tier IBM hardware infrastructure powered by high-performance Intel processors
• A comprehensive library of DASSAULT SYSTEMES PLM software, including
• The CATIA* suite for product definition and simulation
• The ENOVIA* suite for product lifecycle data management
• The SMARTEAM* suite for collaboration, knowledge management and eLearning services
• The DELMIA* suite of process planning and simulation tools
• The WebSphere* application services platform; an Intel processor-powered hardware platform of xSeries* servers, IntelliStation* desktop PCs and ThinkPad* mobile workstations; and consulting/integration services; all from IBM

The PLM solution platform supports many additional third-party software products, including ImpactXoft IX SpeeD* V5, a design suite that enables simultaneous product development (SPD) and fully integrates mobile engineers.

Engineous Software FIPER* Technology – The Federated Intelligent Product Environment is a Web-services based framework for open standards based design collaboration across enterprises and process integration. Developed by Engineous Software with funding from the U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology. The FIPER framework provides a core of web services for management of complex multi-company design projects, including workflow management and third-party tool integration, all delivered through an open standards-based infrastructure that bridges heterogeneous compute environments.

Collaborative Supply Chain
In manufacturing, where change is constant, variations frequently exist between planning and execution—creating a "reality gap" where profits are often made or lost. While forecasting tools help companies develop an "as planned" view of operations, and transactional systems provide an "as executed" picture of what actually happened, neither successfully addresses the situation "as it is."

To solve this problem, most manufacturers rely on a cumbersome combination of "people, paper, and tools" along with costly "just-in-case" practices such as maintaining extra inventory, padding schedules, and producing excess capacity. Yet the inconsistency and unreliability of these approaches along with razor-thin margins and soaring customer expectations make it extremely difficult to align supply and demand or fully understand the ramifications of decisions before they are made.

Transforming the Supply Chain
RapidResponse from Webplan running on Intel® Itanium® 2 processor-based servers, is a supply chain planning and response solution that provides the comprehensive and real-time insight manufacturers need to anticipate potential problems, review action alternatives, and quickly and intelligently respond to the constant changes they face—this helps manufacturers manage at the moment so they can solve today's problems today.

“Our supply chain planning solution operates on a weekly or monthly timeframe. With Webplan RapidResponse on Itanium processors, material, logistics and manufacturing operations are now managed at the moment, giving us a great opportunity to improve business efficiency while enhancing our ability to collaborate with suppliers. Casio is fully leveraging this capability to ensure alignment between supply and demand despite constant changes.” - Atsushi Yazawa, General Manager, IT Casio Computers

Factory Floor Automation
The key to sustained production efficiency is a framework for real-time data flow across the plant floor and between supervisory management systems that allows real time response to unexpected interruptions and irregularities. Transformative factory floor automation solutions provide that framework, and prevent routine minor problems—an equipment failure, material quality issue, parts shortage, an operator injury—from snowballing through the plant, stalling production, inflating costs and decreasing asset utilization performance.

Transforming Production Automation
The Industrial IT Manufacturing Transformation Solution from ABB, Accenture, Microsoft and Intel is a Web-based enterprise framework for shop floor to top floor vertical integration. It provides on-demand data access for individuals and integration services for applications, enabling planning and process synchronization throughout the manufacturing enterprise. The result: lower cost of goods sold, higher productivity, reduced scrap production, improved product quality and reduced downtime.

In a detailed analysis for a major US equipment manufacturer, consultants from the Industrial IT Alliance documented productivity improvement and cost reduction impacts worth $3 million annually, a 5-year net present value of $8.3 million, and full return on solution implementation costs in just 18 months. ¹

After-Sale Product Support
Delivering reliable, high-quality service support for products in the field is one of the most challenging aspects for manufacturers, in part because many service functions are performed by remote, mobile employees working without access to enterprise systems and data. Coordinating their activities, providing technical reference resources, entering parts orders and collecting billing information all pose significant challenges. Transformative service solutions improve resource access and workflow integration, expanding revenue opportunities, expediting feedback on product design, improving service quality and enhancing customer relationships.

Transforming Product Support
Infowave Telispark Mobile Enterprise* 2.5 is an application suite and service platform that links mobile workers and assets with enterprise data and systems across a wide range of wireless networks. Telispark applications are optimized for occasionally connected operation and for use with Intel processor-powered notebook and PDA client devices. They increase worker productivity, improve service quality, enhance customer satisfaction and improve profitability.

Real-time Service Management (RTSM) from Deloitte Consulting and Intel is a service automation solution that delivers a complete suite of services for remote technical service personnel, including product data access, dispatching and service scheduling, parts inventory and ordering, work order management and billing services. The RTSM solution is based on a common foundation architecture that synchronizes data and business processes across multiple enterprise applications.

Intel is Enabling Transformative Solution Development
Intel's involvement in transforming the manufacturing industry extends far beyond the silicon—the company plays a unique role at the center of the world's largest ecosystem composed of thousands of software vendors, hardware manufacturers, service and solution providers, and business and government customers. Within this vast community, Intel acts as a major catalyst for business process transformation in enterprises of all kinds.

Specific Intel contributions to manufacturing transformation include:

• Continuous advances in microprocessor performance and technology driven by Moore 's Law, including new manufacturing technologies and the integration of compute and communication functions in silicon
• A complete, cross-architecture platform for server, workstation, desktop, mobile client and network processing applications that integrates the enterprise from the data center to the hand held device
• Mass production volume economics that optimize technology price performance
• A $2 billion investment in solution development support capabilities, including more than 100 labs worldwide to design, optimize, scale and test Intel architecture-based solutions
• An aggressive program to implement and evaluate new solutions in Intel's own product design and manufacturing operations
• A dedicated manufacturing industry liaison team focused on identifying business and IT needs and coordinating ecosystem partner response to deliver solutions

Tap Into Intel's Transformation Knowledgebase
As a leading innovator in computing and communication technologies, and a key supplier to almost every major industry participant, Intel provides manufacturers worldwide with a unique source of comprehensive intelligence and trusted advice on topics of enterprise operations and information infrastructure. We know how IT is being used to improve products, streamline operations and connect business partners, and know the strengths and vulnerabilities of different strategies. Every day, Intel helps companies discover technology solutions to real business problems that put them one generation ahead of their peers.

For more information, please contact:
Dustin Hanson
Manufacturing Solutions Manager
Office: 952-832-7972
Email: dustin.hanson@intel.com

Copyright©2004. Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. Intel, the Intel logo, Itanium, Pentium, Intel Xeon, Intel Centrino, Intel XScale are trademarks or registered trademarks owned by Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and foreign countries.

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

¹ Intel solution profile “Manufacturing Transformation”, 2004

² Hyper-Threading Technology requires a computer system with an Intel® Pentium® 4 processor supporting Hyper-Threading Technology, a chipset and BIOS that utilize this technology, and an operating system that includes optimizations for this technology. Performance will vary depending on the specific hardware and software you use.

64bit Technology Wave
Karl Schulmeisters, Microsoft Corp

There has been a fair bit of news recently about the “recent” advent of 64bit Computing . In truth 64bit CPUs have been around for quite a while. CPUs like the Alpha™, SPARC™, POWERPC™, PA-RISC™ and MIPS™ all have had 64bit versions for quite a few years, and gaming systems like the Nintendo® N64™ have been using 64bit MIPS™ chip since 1996. So what is the big deal about the latest 64bit news? The simple answer is PC pricing. The latest generation of x86 compatible 64bit processors are priced at a point that they are now well within the PC workstation price range ($1251 for a self-assembled solution according to http://www.pricewatch.com Home → Barebones Computer → Athlon 64 2800).

So who needs a 64 bit CPU? What would anyone do with terabytes of virtual memory? Since today's processors already spend most of their time idling, what drives the need for the greater power a 64bit CPU offers? For users of CAD tools like CATIA™ the answer is performance and model size. While it is true that most CATIA models today fit well within the memory limits that the 32bit x86 architecture offers, more and more users are starting to bump up against the memory limitations of 2 Gigabyte application data space. The /LARGEADDRESSAWARE switch available in Windows XP http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/memory/base/4gt_ram_tuning.asp provides some increased memory to applications. For some models today, and many models in the near future, this will not be enough. Furthermore, with today's larger models, FEA/CAE analysis often has to be run as a standalone solution because of memory limits.

64 bit processing offers the solution. The following table compares 32 processor memory capabilities to 64 bit processor capabilities

Memory Capabilities Table

64 bit enabled applications have a theoretical 8 Terabytes (Tb) of memory space available compared to the 3 Gigabytes for 32bit applications. A Terabyte is 1,000 Gigabytes. As we will discuss later, in practice there are additional limits on memory that Operating Systems impose, so the 8 Terabyte limit is higher than most users will have available to them. Even with these OS imposed limits, applications will see at least a 10 fold increase in virtual memory space with the first OS releases.

In addition to the increased virtual memory available to applications, 64 bit computing improved performance for computationally intensive applications. Applications can now rely on integer data values up to +/- 8 Trillion (64bits of data). Floating point operation precision also increases significantly. According to the data from http://www.spec.org on July 13, 2004, an Opteron 248 running at 2.2 Ghz has a SpecFP2000 (Floating point processing test) of 1691 vs. 1561 for a Pentium 4 EE running at 3.4 Ghz. That is about an 8% improvement on floating point performance over the fastest 32 bit processor.

From http://www.spec.org July 13, 2004

Besides pricing, one of the other critical features that distinguishes the current set of 64 bit Processor solutions is the issue of applications and operating systems. For an application to take full advantage of the 8Tb of memory it does need to be recompiled as a 64 bit application. Previous generations of 64 bit workstations suffered from a lack of application support and the Operating System (OS) support was typically closely tied to the hardware vendor building the workstation. Backwards compatibility with 32 bit applications was either non-existent or required emulators that ran very slowly.

With the advent of the Intel Itanium® CPU and its support by Windows XP this changed somewhat. Applications that had been recompiled to take advantage of the Itanium® Instruction set had full 64 bit address space capabilities and 32 bit Windows applications also be run using. Unfortunately the performance of the 32 bit applications on the Itanium® did not meet the expectations of many customers.

In 2003 AMD™ introduced the Opteron™ and Athlon™ 64 processors. These processors added 64 bit memory access capabilities to processors running x86 compatible instructions. This approach allows both 64 bit and 32 bit applications to run at full speed, while enabling the 64 bit applications to take full advantage of the 64 bit processing capabilities.

Intel responded by announcing the Xeon™ processor with Intel® EM64T (Extended Memory 64 Technology) earlier this year for delivery in August 2004. Unlike the Itanium® CPU, the Xeon™ EM64T processor will have binary executable compatibility with the AMD™ family of 64 bit CPUs. This means that ISVs will be able to build solutions for one platform, which is critical to generating a broad set of applications.

The second critical element for ISV adoption of a new CPU platform is OS support. For CATIA™ V5 users the critical platform is Microsoft Windows®. Since the new 64 bit chips are compatible with the x86 instruction set, the current release of Microsoft Windows® XP will run on them in 32 bit mode at full speed. Microsoft has also announced that it plans to ship a version of Microsoft Windows® XP x64 in the first half of 2005. The x64 designation is to differentiate the support for the AMD™ and Xeon™ chipsets from the version of Windows XP 64 that supports the Itanium® processor since the two versions will not be cross compatible.

There is currently a beta version of Microsoft Windows® XP x64 available. More information on this can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/evaluation/upgrade.mspx . As with any rollout of Microsoft Windows®, ISV applications will lag the release date of the Windows® release by some months. The below table lists the various versions of Microsoft Windows® that will be supporting the new 64 bit processors and the configurations that these versions will support.

Product Memory and CPU Limits Table

Notice that while the processors are theoretically capable of more virtual memory access than Windows® will be supporting in the initial releases of the x64 support. Given the almost 10 fold increase in available memory, workstation applications should not find these limits to be restrictive.

So at this point you are probably asking yourself “Great, all this information – but why should I buy a 64 bit machine when there still isn't a version of Windows® that supports 64 bit processing, much less any applications?”

The answer depends on a couple of points.

• IBM and HP have both announced Workstations based on these CPUs. This means that you can buy these machines from your regular workstation OEM.
• If you are in the process of replacing your current workstations, you should strongly consider moving to a 64 bit platform. CAD models are only going to increase in size and complexity, and it is quite likely that you will need those capabilities before the end of the 3-5 year lifecycle of any hardware you purchase today.
• You can run Windows® XP in 32 bit mode today. When Windows XP x64 becomes available, you simply upgrade the OS and you have full 64 bit capabilities.
• Even 32 bit applications like CATIA™ benefit from running under Windows® XP x64

This last point may not be very obvious. If you refer back to the Memory Capabilities Table, you will see that applications that have been compiled with the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE switch can address 4 Gigabytes of memory under Windows® XP x64 whereas they are limited to 3 Gigabytes under Windows® XP. This 33% increase is available because in the x64 version of Windows®, the OS kernel reserves the high end of the virtual memory space for itself thereby allowing 32 bit applications access to the full 4 Gigabytes of memory addressable in a 32 bit environment.

The three current OEMs providing complete workstations solutions are IBM, HP and Alienware.

• IBM's solution is the Intellistation A Pro http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/intellistation/apro/index.html and it is based on AMD's Opteron™ CPU.
• HP just announced their Xeon based xw4200, xw6200 and xw8299 workstations http://www.hp.com/workstations/pws/xw4200/
• Alienware is shipping a dual Opteron based workstation in a range of CPU speeds http://www.alienware.com/Configurator_Pages/mj-12_4500.aspx?SysCode=PC-MJ12-4500&SubCode=SKU-EXTREME

Within the next 6 months, you will see the 64 bit workstation become not only an affordable reality for CAD users, but in all likelihood, you will see it become the dominant CAD platform very shortly thereafter.