Transformational tech unveiled by Arm and Aston Martin Aramco F1 puts wind up rival teams
As Aston Martin Aramco Formula One team’s official AI compute platform provider, Cambridge-headquartered Arm is enabling a faster path from concept to performance on the track.
The F1 team is focused on gaining a competitive edge so when the team set out to build its wind tunnel, the goal was to turn data into aerodynamics and downforce faster than the competition. The result is the CoreWeave wind tunnel, a high-performance system built on the Arm compute platform that delivers scalable intelligence at the edge.
With Arm-powered edge AI inference and real-time processing in place, Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team extracts more value from every minute of time spent in the wind tunnel, which translates into earlier upgrades, smarter development calls, and a faster cycle from concept to competition.
This partnership reflects a broader shift happening across performance engineering. As the demands for faster development and greater accuracy converge, compute is becoming a critical enabler at every stage – from simulation environments to physical systems and vehicle platforms.
In Formula One™, the difference between finishing on a podium and falling behind can come down to a detail as small as a revised winglet or a sharper diffuser edge. But getting these details right, from design concept to competitive upgrades, depends on one thing above all: speed – not just on the circuit but across the entire development cycle.
The goal in designing the revolutionary new wind tunnel was to turn data into aerodynamics and downforce faster than the competition.That demanded a new kind of compute platform, one that delivers scalable intelligence at the edge, inside a tightly regulated, high-pressure development loop.
By regulation, all Formula One™ wind tunnel models must be no larger than 60 per cent of the actual car. Inside that scale model. Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ Team has packed advanced sensing technology and compute systems to capture more detailed aerodynamic data with greater accuracy.
However, greater fidelity introduces complexity, with over a thousand miniature sensors being packed into the body – all functioning within strict power and thermal budgets. Each session in the wind tunnel is also time-limited and high-stakes, where a single faulty sensor can invalidate an entire run.
To make sense of the large volume of data generated, the team uses Arm-powered compute at the edge to filter and process signals in real-time. This gives engineers faster access to cleaner insights, so they can focus on identifying development paths that lead to real performance on the track sooner.
“In Formula One™, everything we do is driven by data. From an engineering perspective, our decisions rely on having the right information at the right time. The faster we can access and understand that data, the faster we can move, and what’s where this system makes a real difference,” says Charlie Blackwell, Head of Electronics, at Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ Team.
CoreWeave's clout begins at the sensor level, where embedded Arm microcontrollers provide accurate, energy-efficient signal acquisition.
To ensure engineers are working with clean, usable insights, the data is processed in real time at the edge – organising, filtering and flagging any inconsistencies before results are validated in the cloud. This helps protect the integrity of each session and enables faster feedback into the development process.
From there, selected data flows to the cloud, where it is validated against computational fluid dynamic simulations and correlated with telemetry from the track. The result is a continuous, synchronised loop that empowers engineers to validate concepts and refine upgrades with speed and confidence.
Blackwell adds: “Having Arm as a partner gives us access to a broader ecosystem and the technical expertise to make smart choices, whether that’s around sensors, compute performance, or the best-fit technology for each part of our system.”