A couple of days ago, Trek published a column by Scott Daubert that provides a lot of background on the new TTx time trial bike frame as well as the new aero bar that evolved out of the prototype that Lance Armstrong has been using in time trials. The column also discusses the road wheel that Trek is designing in conjunction with Hed Cycling Products.
One of the things that’s alluded to but not said in this article is that the company behind the computing power that Trek needs to get its Computational Fluid Dynamics work done is AMD— another major sponsor of the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team. If you look at the Partnership & the Competitive Edge page on AMDproCycling.com, you’ll see that AMD provides computers driven by Opteron Processors to Trek. AMD says the Opteron is the “world’s first x86 dual-core processor”.
It’s hard to believe that there are many desktop applications that soak up all of the power of a 64-bit dual-core processor other than computational fluid dynamic modeling. If you can think of any, let me know.
I like Scott’s story of how he and Bill Miller travelled around Central Europe with thousands of dollars of prototype bike equipment in the back of the car. Daubert says he worried constantly about being stopped at border crossings for that reason. If you’ve never been in that situation you might wonder, is such a concern legitimate?
My wife and I got stopped at one of those border crossings between Switzerland and Germany on one of our trips to Europe. It was small border crossing that we arrived at late at night on our way to Friedrichshafen.
We got searched because we were Americans driving a rented Volkswagen station wagon with big duffel bags in the back. The border police went through our dirty clothes, our undeveloped 35mm film, and gifts for our family carefully before letting us pass.
If you ask me, he was right to be a little concerned.
Finally, the article points out that Daubert’s going to be writing a weekly column from now to the end of the Tour de France. I’m sure he won’t lack for material. I don’t expect to be able to scoop Trek’s own guy on the scene, so his column will be a primary source of info for me.