Briefings: February 2007

By DE Editors

Interactive Supercomputing Wins $150,000 Government Grant

Interactive Supercomputing Inc. (Waltham, MA) was awarded a U.S. research grant aimed at parallelizing popular desktop computing applications to run on high-performance computers. The $150,000 grant from Oak Ridge National Labs (Oak Ridge, TN) will be used to develop toolkits that parallelize the algorithms and models resulting from popular desktop technical computing software such as MATLAB, Python, R, and IDL, also called Very High Level Language (VHLL) applications.

The goal of the grant is to enable scientists and engineers to tap the parallel processing capabilities of high-performance computers while minimizing development time.

The Oak Ridge National Labs project will explore where it is best to parallelize codes written in a VHLL, with potential applications including climate modeling, nanotechnology, biology, and modeling fusion reactions. The project will use existing mathematical libraries and solvers on the servers, accessing them from a VHLL on the desktop.

ISC’s Star-P software will serve as the project’s testing platform. Star-P is an interactive parallel computing platform that allows users to code algorithms and models on the desktop using familiar VHLLs and then run them on parallel servers or clusters without re-programming in C, Fortran, or MPI.

“Considering the growing importance of parallel computing architectures,” said Eckart Jansen, VP of advanced development at ISC, “as well as the scientific reach of the Oak Ridge National Labs, this ... should have a big impact in many areas of science, such as clean energy, environmental protection, and national security.”

LMS International (Leuven, Belgium), which develops simulation and testing systems for the automotive industry, and IPG Automotive (Karlsruhe, Germany) entered into a partnership to integrate IPG-DRIVER, IPG’s virtual driver model, into the LMS Virtual.Lab Motion software.

LMS International

The newest release from Hewlett-Packard (Palo Alto, CA), based on BladeSystem infrastructure, gives users the ability to access workstation compute power using client devices or Microsoft Windows-based workstations, PCs, and notebooks. The new HP ProLiant Blade Workstation is designed for users in manufacturing as well as the public sector and financial trading.

Specific workstation features include fully certified and supported HP Remote Graphics software, real-time streaming video, 3D graphics, and multiple display support. Additional benefits and enhancements include improved data security, disaster recovery support, system uptime, and easy availability and scalability.

Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets (London, UK) recently customized its 255-position trading floor with 280 HP ProLiant xw25p Blade Workstations. The devices are used by traders in the foreign exchange, derivatives, and global commodities markets, as well as by sales traders in the derivatives and interest-rate trading markets.

More information on the new Blade System is available on the HP workstations page.

Jettisoning its old licensing model in favor of free and open-source software, Aras Corporation (Lawrence, MA) has announced it will forego a traditional sales force and beef up its service and consulting forces as it offers Aras Innovator 8 exclusively on the Microsoft .NET platform.

“Open source means unlimited user access to the system,” said Aras President Peter Schroer during a recent phone conference. Schroer went on to explain that his company was switching its licensing model to wipe out the big upfront capital expenditure obstacle many companies face when looking at a product lifecycle management (PLM) application. “By delivering the Aras Innovator solutions as enterprise open source on Microsoft, we provide software licensing simplicity and align with the technologies that companies already have and understand.”

Aras Corp.

Companies, many already familiar with the Windows environment, will be able to download the application for free, immediately begin to use it, and pay for help or consultation as they need it. And because the source code will be open, the company expects that users will contribute to the software’s further development.

Innovator 8 is configured to run on Vista, Internet Explorer 7, and SQL Server 2005 with options for Office 2007, SharePoint 2007, and other Microsoft products. These include SharePoint Portal Server; Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007; Business Scorecard Manager; Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006; and Active Directory.

“Companies already have IT staff that know how to work with Microsoft,” said Marc Lind, Aras vice president of marketing, during a recent interview. “It allows them to work with our system without having to learn another language.”

Aras Innovator is designed to help manufacturers with processes such as new product introduction, quality compliance, and enterprise PLM. It provides phase-gate project management of milestones and deliverables; failure mode and effects analysis as well as closed-loop actions for mitigating risks and achieving compliance; and bill of materials, document management, and engineering change workflows for product development control and project cost tracking.

While the enhancements to Version 8 rest mainly with tweaks and changes to accommodate the new open-source model, the functionality of the solutions can be tailored to support such processes as project lifecycle management, asset lifecycle management, and service lifecycle management. Aras Innovator’s technology is a model-based, service-oriented architecture designed to enable companies to deploy quickly and adapt easily. It can operate either as a stand-alone enterprise applications or as an integrated complement to existing systems.

Aras Innovator is based on open standards, including XML/SOAP Web services, for simplified integration with conventional enterprise systems such as SAP, Oracle, UGS, PTC, Dassault, and Infor legacy applications; enterprise application integration suites; or enterprise service bus (ESB) products. Price: download is free; $8,300 (monthly Enterprise Edition support subscription); $4,100 (monthly Small Business Edition support subscription).

The free download, additional open source solution projects, and further information are available at aras.com.

Combined Libraries Enhance Compute Performance

Visual Numerics, Inc. (Houston, TX) will integrate and distribute the Intel Math Kernel Library (Intel MKL) with its IMSL Fortran Numerical Library version 6.0 early this year.  In addition to a substantial performance increase for IMSL Fortran users, Visual Numerics says the combination will improve support for IMSL library customers on Intel processor-based platforms. The bundle covers both distributed and shared memory models.

More specifically, Visual Numerics plans to bundle the Intel optimized BLAS, LAPACK, and ScaLAPACK functionality from the Intel Math Kernel Library into the company’s IMSL Fortran Numerical Library.

Intel MKL is a set of mathematical functions for engineering, scientific, and financial applications requiring high performance on Intel processors. The joint offering provides improved IMSL computational performance across all Intel platforms including Intel Core 2 Duo, Pentium 4, Itanium 2, and the new Dual and Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors.

New Long-Term 3D Data Archiving

Capvidia (Leuven, Belgium), a developer of 3D CAD translation software, and Jotne EPM Technology (Oslo, Norway), a software company for industrial data management, have joined forces to launch a new product for long-term 3D data archiving.

EDMmodelServer for 3D and PLM will support the implementation of the EN9300 standard (LOTAR) for archiving 3D data and has been extended to include verification of 3D STEP models via Capvidia’s proprietary 3DTransVidia technology, which solves data incompatibility problems resulting from non-uniform 3D model interpretations by different CAD systems.

Memory Gaffe

We incorrectly reported the memory capability of the Dell Precision 490 workstation in the January issue. Click here for the Precision 490 review. In fact, up to 32GB of RAM can be accommodated by the Precision 490 using 4GB DIMMs.

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