Lenovo and AMD power Dar Group

Lenovo and AMD are revolutionising the design and engineering capabilities of Dar Group, a global leader in design consultancy. By deploying Lenovo ThinkSystem servers powered by AMD EPYC™ processors, Dar Group has achieved up to 5 times faster processing speeds, enabling unparalleled design excellence.

Dar Group is renowned for delivering award-winning design, planning, engineering, project management, and sustainability services worldwide. With over 65 years of expertise and a portfolio boasting more than 4,500 projects worth over $540 billion, Dar Group continues to lead the industry in innovation and excellence.

As the company undertook increasingly ambitious projects, from designing infrastructure for a multi-billion-dollar superhub airport in Poland to supporting the largest renewable energy intervention program in Sub-Saharan Africa, its existing server infrastructure needed a major refresh in order to deliver fast processing speeds and meet the demands of complex simulations. Furthermore Dar relies heavily on 3D design and engineering simulation software, which comes with incredibly high computational demands.

After capturing Dar’s requirements in detail, Lenovo designed a high-performance computing (HPC) cluster based on four Lenovo ThinkSystem SR655 V3 servers. Each Lenovo server includes two 4th Gen AMD EPYC™ processors, with 64 cores per processor, providing exceptional memory bandwidth and capacity. Lenovo worked with Dar to deploy the new HPC infrastructure at the group’s central data center in London. Up and running after one month, the Lenovo cluster is currently used by teams throughout Dar’s global business.

The AMD powered Lenovo IT infrastructure has yielded remarkable results for Dar Group. With processing speeds boosted by 3-5 times and a server footprint reduced by 50%, Dar Group can now execute complex simulations with unparalleled speed and precision. The solution is also 50% more cost-effective than comparable cloud options, demonstrating significant cost savings for the company.

“With our old servers we often had to make compromises, like running smaller models or ones with lower resolution, in order to make sure jobs were completed on time. With Lenovo and AMD, there are fewer limits: we can run simulations without compromise and get results much faster than before,” said Adnan Akhdar, CFD Specialist at Dar Group.

Mohammad Badran, Senior Systems Engineer, Information Technology at Dar Group also commented, “Lenovo paid very close attention to the details, giving us very high performance and memory bandwidth in a dense footprint, effectively reducing the number of servers we needed by half. The 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors had just been released, and Lenovo was the only vendor who was able to guarantee delivery. It was the right solution, at the right price and at the right time.”