ANSYS Supports Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003

By DE Editors

ANSYS, Inc. (Canonsburg,PA) today, September 19, announced that the upcoming releases of its ANSYS 11.0 and FLUENT 6.3 multiphysics simulation solutions will include 64-bit support for Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003. ANSYS says that by enabling HPC (high-performance computing) on the Microsoft Windows platform, users will be able to deploy CAE at a higher level than before. This, in turn, will decrease the time required for simulations and increasing the accuracy of results.

According to the company, ANSYS 11.0 and FLUENT 6.3 take advantage of the Microsoft MPI (message passing interface) software layer in Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 for data communication between processors on the cluster. The new releases will also use the Microsoft Job Scheduler in Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 for launching and controlling jobs on the cluster.

ANSYS reports that to validate its commercial robustness of the upcoming releases, it recently solved a 100 million-degree-of-freedom structural analysis problem using Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 on an HP ProLiant cluster. No time metrics were provided. Figure 1 (right) is an example of the type of the complexity that can be undertaken on a 64-bit platform.

"Before 64-bit-enabled Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, ]users] would need a shared memory machine or Linux cluster to solve 100 million-degree-of-freedom models and beyond.  It's very exciting to deliver this type of performance with Microsoft Job Scheduler integrated with ANSYS Workbench to our ]users]," said Mike Wheeler, vice president and general manager at ANSYS, Inc., in a press statement.

For details, go to ANSYS by clicking here.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company's website.