Latest News
January 1, 2006
By DE Editors
High-Performance Computing Becomes Interactive
M.I.T.-born start-up Interactive Supercomputing (ISC) has unveiled a new class of technical computing software that effectively transforms parallel supercomputers into interactive desktop tools for rapidly solving large scientific and engineering problems.
ISC says its Star-P is the world’s first interactive parallel computing platform. It enables scientists and engineers to code algorithms and models on their desktops using familiar mathematical software packages such as MathWorks’ MATLAB, and run them instantly and interactively on SGI Altix servers. Star-P eliminates the need to reprogram your applications in C, Fortran, or MPI to run on parallel computers, saving potentially months to years for computer-intensive problems.
Star-P automatically connects desktop applications to HPCs and parallelizes the application code on the fly, enabling users to scale their applications across any multiprocessor system or parallel cluster in real time.
Researchers at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital are using Star-P to analyze MRI examinations for quantifying the impact of cancer therapy on blood volume and flow in the developing brain of children. Geophysicists at the University of California San Diego are using Star-P to develop more accurate models for predicting earthquake hazards. And researchers at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in conjunction with the Ohio Supercomputer Center are using Star-P in a variety of defense-related applications including new radar system development.
Star-P can also be useful to project leaders, whose primary concern is accelerating the time to market of new products while cutting development costs. Star-P can also benefit infrastructure leaders who provide HPC systems as an internal or external resource. Star-P enables them to extend parallel computing to a wider range of users, while increasing the return on their HPC investment.
The platform comes at a time when many desktop workstations can no longer handle the computational requirements of new mathematical models and algorithms. Yet very few commercial software applications are able to run at all on parallel computing architectures, let alone interactively. Star-P means researchers won’t have to stop their workflow, re-code applications, test the application on supercomputers in batch mode, and then refine their work.
Star-P 2.0 extends desktop MATLAB applications to high-performance computers. The company plans to support other interactive desktop tools, such as Mathematica, Maple, and Python in the near future.
Currently, Star-P runs on SGI Altix servers supporting one to 512 processors, 24TB of memory, and running 64-bit Linux. Star-P will be marketed through SGI’s direct and indirect sales force.
For more information, visit the ISC website.
Interactive Supercomputing
Waltham, MA • interactivesupercomputing.com
The MathWorks
Natick, MA • mathworks.com
SGI—Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Mountain View, CA • sgi.com
ARCHIBUS has released FM Web Central 15 with enhanced core functionality and three new web-based applications: Project Management, Capital Budgeting, and Move Management. The company also released Web-based activities updated to the J2EE platform Emergency Preparedness and Asset Management.
ARCHIBUS/FM Project Management helps keep projects on schedule and within budget by creating a central repository for a “top-down” perspective of program and project priorities, actions, and costs. Analytic views can summarize the details from hundreds of projects in a single matrix. The product tracks property acquisition, renovation, construction, condition assessment, and move projects in one integrated view so users can coordinate interrelated milestones from different departments, disciplines, and sites.
ARCHIBUS/FM Capital Budgeting manages the capital budget cycle to improve strategic capital planning. It uses web-based intelligent workflows to connect stakeholders throughout the process, aligning with an organization’s overall strategic facility and infrastructure plans. It offers consoles and dashboards to help users visualize a project’s progress, and it summarizes capital planning activities in a consistent format to help prioritize programs and projects, coordinate activities, and budget resources. Intelligent workflows have been designed to enable what-if scenario planning.
ARCHIBUS/FM Move Management streamlines the move/add/change process, reducing costs and minimizing organizational disruption. It provides automated workflow rules ensuring that employees receive e-mail notifications of each move phase.
FM Web Central 15 is available now. Current users who participate in the ARCHIBUS Annual Software Subscription program receive the enhancements upon request, with no additional charge. End-users with previous versions of FM Web Central can upgrade for a fee. The upgrade includes documentation in both printed and electronic formats.
For more information, visit archibus.com.
ARCHIBUS Inc.
Boston, MA • archibus.com
UGS Corp. announced that its Teamcenter PLM portfolio fully supports SQL Server 2005, the latest version of Microsoft‘s flagship database. Dassault Systemes made a similar announcement, explaining its V5 PLM solutions, including CATIA, DELMIA, ENOVIA, and SMARTEAM, will support Microsoft’s SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005, and BizTalk Server 2006, all of which were launched at a global Microsoft event in San Francisco. It’s expected that this support means customers of both companies will be more productive.
According to Dassault, the key advantage for PLM customers will be more easily deployed PLM (product lifecycle management) solutions and more efficient integration of enterprise systems. With BizTalk 2006 and V5 PLM Web Services, users will be able to use ENOVIA Lifecycle Applications to synchronize their PLM solutions with other enterprise systems. SQL Server 2005 brings its deployability and scalability to a new class of enterprise PLM.
The integration of Visual Studio 2005 in CAA V5 will offer the developer community a productive and easy-to-use environment due to Visual Studio’s increasingly powerful coding and debugging capabilities.
Via SMARTEAM on SQL Server 2005, Dassault Systemes customers are expected to realize rapid deployment and improved ROI. The data management and developer productivity improvements in SQL Server 2005 will further enhance the solution’s robustness.
UGS, for its part, credits a long-standing, strategic relationship with Microsoft for some of the performance and scalability enhancements in SQL Server 2005 that Teamcenter takes advantage of.
“As a result of this strategic relationship and Teamcenter’s comprehensive support of SQL Server, companies of all sizes can effectively deploy the popular full-scale PLM solution at an affordable price,” said Mike Tuchen, general manager for SQL Server at Microsoft Corp.
Teamcenter is used by product manufacturers to manage the information and processes associated with the entire product lifecycle. Teamcenter is centered on addressing critical business initiatives such as new product development and introduction (NPDI), global product development, and regulatory compliance. The effective management and execution of each of these business initiatives can have a profound effect on an organization’s ability to drive profit and revenue growth from new and existing product lines.
SQL Server 2005 was designed to enhance enterprise data management, developer productivity, and business intelligence while Visual Studio 2005 is expected to make all types of developers more productive. BizTalk Server 2006 reduces the complexity of enterprise system integration.
UGS Corp.
Plano, TX • ugs.com
Dassault Systemes
Paris, FR • 3ds.com
ECO Solution Easy On Users and IT, No Need for ERP
Octane, says Enginuity Development Inc., is a fully integrated, stand-alone engineering change notice and request workflow solution designed by engineers for engineers. Octane, it continues, represents the next generation of EDM (engineering data management) software.
Octane has been designed from the get-go to be easy to use. Additionally, Octane has also been designed from the start to demand little in the way of IT resources to install and maintain: just 190MB for initial installation. Best of all, says the company, you can use Octane without being forced to buy a large and expensive ERP or other business system.
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Octane leverages JAVA and web technologies to create a web-accessible system for documenting and communicating engineering changes. It provides a simple and robust workflow process for your change management. For example, all requests follow a clear approval path, and users can reject, approve, delete, and complete requests. Once a request has been approved, Octane issues subsequent tasks based on the request type.
As a collaboration tool tracking engineering change requests and other approval-driven processes, Octane’s integrated task tracking ensures that all required work is tracked and completed, satisfying various QS and QA requirements for documentation.
Octane works by letting you set up an unlimited number of requests. You then link requests to a task set or, optionally, you can link each request type with a different task set. Task sets enable you to consistently manage all the work that needs to be completed for your requests.
Octane’s integrated task module provides tools for all team members to manage and track work. For example, before a request can be marked as finished, Octane checks to ensure that all tasks related to that request have been completed. This gate method ensures that all the necessary work is tracked and completed.
Octane also provides customized fields for your request and your affected items. These fields allow you to fit Octane with your existing process and request forms.
Enginuity Development Inc.
Crystal Lake, IL • edm-concepts.com
Library Extends AutoCAD
AutoSolids, Inc. has announced the release of AS Mechanical, a 3D mechanical hardware library for AutoCAD and AutoCAD-based applications. AS Mechanical includes a complete range of hardware items from nuts and bolts to steel and aluminum beams and sections, and from sprockets to keys and everything in between. Supported standards include ANSI, ISO, DIN, EURO, and others.
AS Mechanical’s 3D models are parametric, allowing you to easily change characteristics like bolt sizes, head styles, thread pitches, and beam sections. To change a model, you click the appropriate toolbar button or pull-down menu item. Up pops a hardware dialog from which you simply adjust the available parameters, press the OK button, and the item is created. Additionally, when you share your designs with other AutoCAD users, AS Mechanical solids perform and respond exactly like native AutoCAD solids.
AS Mechanical supports AutoCAD 2000 through 2006 and their vertical applications, including Mechanical Desktop, and AutoCAD Mechanical. A demo version of AS Mechanical is available on the AutoSolids site.
AutoSolids, Inc.
Pace, FL • autosolids.com
At a meeting with Drew Mattison, Alias’ global industry manager of design, and Christine Stoner, the company’s communication specialist, visually intelligent (VI) businesses were a central topic. Calling customized consulting and design services the next generation of business growth, Mattison explained that Alias is hoping to educate manufacturing companies as to the efficacy of becoming VI businesses so that they can become more efficient at developing products while refocusing their efforts on design and innovation.
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“We want to help enable companies to become more visually intelligent.” he said. “and therefore more competitive.”
Though Mattison was able to tell me that Alias was currently working toward those ends with 10 “of the world’s largest design companies,” he was not at liberty to name them for various reasons. But the customized service entails a strategic opportunity assessment of the company’s processes from initial design sketch to product packaging and yields an ROI-driven digital manufacturing roadmap. It involves a lot of research and can engage everything from hiring qualified designers to how a company’s accountant keeps track of payables.
Because it’s a customized service that is tailored to each company’s specific needs, the full monty can cost anywhere from $200,000 to a cool million or more. In the end, the result everyone is looking for is increased innovation.
Mattison says visual intelligence is based on four “pillars of design.” Alias calls these create, craft, collaborate, and convey. The concept is that if you implement a process that enables the efficient means of each of these pillars, records iterations with all their associated digital history and information, and make it available to all corners of your operation and any level of your supply chain, then you’ve enabled your company to make wiser decisions about your product designs.
As a VI company, using the correct tools, you might decide it’s time for a new line of watches. If your design team comes up with a design, say, like the one rendered here in StudioTools 13, you have a photorealistic digital image to present at the next meeting where a new product will be picked for production. Such an image can be used to sell the decision makers on the value of the design, for marketing and advertising collateral, to clearly communicate the design to the manufacturing floor, even to present to focus groups before ever developing a prototype.
“We’re not advocating doing away with prototypes,” said Mattison, “just getting better ones” via more iterations. He says VI businesses will free up their designers and idea people to exercise their imaginations and to truly innovate, which, after all, is what engineering is all about. —JG
Alias
Toronto, Ont. • alias.com
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