Hosted CFD Software Increases Speed

Engineers and analysts in the UK can now access XFlow Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software as an online HPC service, powered by an 8,000-core server cluster. According to the company, the service will enable access to greater compute power than is possible on a personal desktop PC or local workstations.

Live since July 2013, the service has already been tested and has shown almost linear speed increases up to 1000 cores, and is currently already being used by an international car manufacturer.

To complement the CFD HPC analysis service, engineers can also access Dragon HPC visualization technology connected locally to the OCF enCORE cluster via a high speed Ethernet.

"XFlow is a transient solver which creates a lot of information," said Matt Hieatt, commercial director of FlowHD, which re-sells XFlow in the UK and Ireland. FlowHD also provides local expertise for implementation, training and support. "Running XFlow on a powerful server cluster such as enCORE is essential for speed of analysis. Importantly, if a user needs to post-process 100-150Gb data, it might take five to six hours to download on a local desktop PC. The added complementary functionality of Dragon HPC is essential so that users can postprocess remotely and immediately."

As well as traditional licensing, XFlow is available using a token licensing system that allows the software to be used from any location and across enCORE on a completely pay-per-use basis.

For more information, visit FlowHD and OCF.

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