Simulation Theory raises $2 million to stop computers from wasting computing resources

Simulation theoryIt is a startup dedicated to reducing waste by optimizing computing resources. It has successfully raised $2 million in pre-seed funding.

The technology of simulation theory helps businesses Leverage existing infrastructure more efficiently It reduces cloud computing costs by up to 40% by greatly increasing application efficiency.

In an interview with GamesBeat, Simulation Theory CEO Anthony Castoro said, “The company has technology that allows people to leverage the full power of their CPU on any number of cores. With the rise of AI and, before that, Web3, the growth in demand for computing resources has skyrocketed. And we see investments that people have to make in power that will take the next five, ten, 15 years to meet. data center needs”

He added: “Our argument is that you can’t create a solution to that problem. You also need to be more efficient. There are opportunities in many cases to reduce processing budgets by 30% to 40%.”

Funding

The funding round was led by Larry Russ, Managing Partner of Russ, August & Kabat, with angel investors including Ryan Peterson, former CEO of Finger Food Advanced Technology Group, and Robert Wallace of Strategic Alternatives.

The funding will be used to support further development of Simulation Theory’s innovative software development kit (SDK) designed to enhance applications’ ability to optimize available resources. To help companies Save billions from overspending on hardware and cloud deployments each year.

In today’s digital world where AI generation is widely used and complex simulations are being implemented, Many businesses are increasingly relying on cloud services. But it also has to contend with skyrocketing prices associated with using inefficient hardware.

“The digital revolution is over. Welcome to the era of optimization,” said Castoro. “As the demand for computing resources continues to increase, We cannot easily find a way out of a problem. Simulation Theory is a deep technology company founded to address the fundamental computing challenges of this new era. The Simulation Theory SDK helps customers maximize their existing computing resources, reduce costs, and accelerate business results. and promote sustainable practices that can significantly reduce our carbon footprint.”

Castoro said fundraising came naturally.

“We understand that building software that scales on modern CPUs is challenging. And the result is a solution that throws more expensive hardware at the problem,” Randy Culley, CTO of Simulation Theory, said in a statement. “Our technology makes it easy for application developers to take advantage of multi-core CPU architectures on all popular operating systems. First group of customers Some of us have already increased their processing efficiency by several levels. This reduces completion time by up to 90 percent on the same hardware.”

Origin

Culley and Castoro have known each other for more than 15 years. Culley is a game designer who has focused on rendering software that can make games shine in visual effects. For about a year 2018 Culley started working on multi-core problems.

“I have met amazing people throughout my career in the video game industry, and Randy is one of those people. We just keep leaning into each other,” Castoro said.

Culley began focusing on parallel programming problems for multi-core CPUs back in the days of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, when multi-core CPUs were all the rage.

“I started working on this problem basically during the Xbox 360 and PS3 days because you couldn’t feed the GPU fast enough to keep my renders going,” Culley said.

He branched out into full system architecture and learned how to scale cores horizontally on local hardware, whether it be the Xbox 360 or your computer or phone. They all have multiple cores and only a handful of programs work well, he said.

Although the multi-core disruptions occurring in the industry are ancient history, But it had a lasting impact in that many programmers never learned how to program across multiple cores. Multi-threaded software is not easy. And only a few people know what to do in each company.

Culley sought to create software that could be automated so that programmers with limited knowledge would not need to learn to code in an equitable way.

problem solving

“Unfortunately, this remains a very difficult problem to solve. And the problem is that making programs run in parallel is complicated and difficult. How do you organize and synchronize activities? So that you don’t freeze or crash the CPU or create more instability,” Culley said. “That’s a hard thing to do.”

And GPUs are really good at parallelism. But it’s not very good at making logical decisions, so CPUs are quite necessary in everything from games to large-scale language models for AI.

“You have to mix both CPU and GPU,” Culley said.

As a result, the CPU is the bottleneck, and software is required to speed it up by creating programs that can optimize the use of CPU cores.

“We built it to make the most of the CPU,” Culley said. “Why would you buy a 64-core CPU when the most power-hungry thing is a video game that only uses six cores? There is a lot of processing power that is just not being used.”

Castoro said Culley fixes the problem with custom schedulers or proprietary technology. The company has filed a patent for the technology. It takes the form of a software development kit (SDK) that developers can integrate into their applications. And it makes it easier to parallelize the tasks that the app is doing. without solving really difficult parallel processing problems.

seeing problems

It can be difficult to visualize what this can do for enterprise applications. But the gameplay is a little simpler. If you have ever played a game and had various things A lot is happening on screen at once, like many soldiers in one fierce battle. Or there are lots of explosions and movement. It puts a strain on hardware resources, which can’t keep up with the need for fast 3D rendering. Parallel code distributed across CPU cores can make these types of scenes run more smoothly.

Another example is playing games with split screen. One player plays a cooperative game on one side of the screen. and another player uses the other side of the screen. This is a difficult problem because it’s like running two games simultaneously using a single gaming machine. The scenes on both sides of the scene show different animations. So the hardware has to display two different images simultaneously. Using Multicore is another solution to this problem.

Problems in such games are where the challenge lies. And Culley has helped fix it. And now the company is focusing on solving the same parity for enterprise and cloud applications. At a time when hardware is scarce and expensive due to the demand for AI, this type of solution based on simulation theory is timely, Castoro said.

“With AI, there are a lot of discrete systems that you can integrate our scheduler into and parallelize within those systems. Then you can create those systems that actually run in parallel without any synchronization between those systems,” Culley said.

Organizational customers

Customers including Secur3D, Encant AI, Perception Grid and Gameye are among the first Simulation Theory partners to evaluate the benefits of integrating Simulation Theory technology in terms of future cost savings and increased efficiency. The company is talking to a number of hardware vendors as well.

Secur3D, a UGC curation and protection company, is changing the way platforms, creators, and brands protect their 3D content from infringement and unauthorized use. Leveraging simulation theory, Secur3D is poised to rapidly scale operations.

“Integrating simulation theory will allow us to expand in ways that we thought would take many years,” Nigel said.
Metcalf, head of product at Secur3D, “We expect to increase our asset acquisition capabilities by at least 20x and believe this technology will change the way people predict, calculate and respond to customer needs.”

Simulation Theory recently launched a pilot project to test the technology’s performance for enterprise use across industries.

Simulation Theory’s mission is to solve the most complex computing problems to help billions of companies. Founded in 2023 by Anthony Castoro and Randy Culley, Simulation Theory’s proprietary SDKs help businesses. Utilize existing resources efficiently and sustainably to reduce maximum costs Increase efficiency and reduce the impact on the environment to a minimum.

In the future, the company could create software that can do a better job of distributing programs across graphics processing units (GPUs), Castoro said. In 2025, the company will publish some white papers.

What’s in the name?

However, this company is named after the idea that we are in the Matrix. And we don’t know this. I asked Castoro. “Are you a believer?”

He replied, ‘Do you know what the point is?’ Either way, to be honest.”

Castoro said more seriously. “If you try to create a simulation that is so high-fidelity that you can’t tell the difference between it and reality, You will need to use all the computing resources available to you. And that’s what we enable people to do. And that’s why we chose that name.”

Perhaps the sad thing for Castoro is that the success of this startup may take him away from gaming, at least for a while.

“I think I’m a little.. When we were looking at the conference that would be held next year. We wondered if we would go to a gaming convention,” Castoro said.