Intelligent Light Upgrades CFD Offering

Intelligent Light, a provider of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and visualization tools for the HPC market, has announced the latest version of its FIELDVIEW software suite. FIELDVIEW 11.1 provides a new parallel implementation that delivers scalable post-processing performance to users of multi-core workstations, large shared memory systems, and cluster computing environments. New data analysis, automation, and data reading capabilities are also a part of this release.

FIELDVIEW Parallel capabilities have been implemented for high performance on scalable computing hardware. Speedups of 5x on 8 CPUs is typical when post-processing realistic, multigrid CFD simulations on systems using AMD Opteron processors. FIELDVIEW Parallel is designed to reduce turnaround time for simulations and make larger simulations more practical. FIELDVIEW Parallel capabilities are available for users of multi-core workstations and HPC server users alike. FIELDVIEW 11.1 will support multigrid parallel execution on shared memory systems of up to 4 processor cores without modification or fees. Large processor counts and cluster computing are supported with an optional FIELDVIEW Parallel license. New in this release is support for HP-UX running on Itanium processors.

"FIELDVIEW is a powerful tool for working with large, complex simulations. FIELDVIEW 11.1 brings new capabilities to the users that continue to make their real-world production environments more effective, capable, and productive. In the last 3 years we've seen the size of data grow by factors of 10-25x," said Matt Godo, FIELDVIEW product manager. "Today it is common to see simulations that run 25M-250M cells and require results in hours. FIELDVIEW Parallel addresses the need to be able to run very large simulations without affecting project schedules."

"HP's most demanding CFD customers have a new choice now that FIELDVIEW 11.1 delivers a high-performance, parallel version for our Itanium/HP-UX servers," said Lee Fisher, worldwide CAE alliances manager at HP. "Intelligent Light has taken a leadership position in architecting FIELDVIEW so that compute intensive calculations like feature extraction may be run in parallel on a large memory HP Integrity server without the delay of moving huge datasets. FIELDVIEW clients provide interactive 3D exploration of the simulation output to yield new insights for improving product design."

"By making parallel processing standard within FIELDVIEW, the scalable performance of AMD Opteron dual-core processor-based systems is accessible to CFD users of high performance workstations and large processor count HPC installations alike," said Pat Patla, Director of Server/Workstation Business, AMD. "FIELDVIEW is expected to be a critical application for the CFD community and together with FIELDVIEW ATViewer and the powerful capabilities of AMD Opteron processors we are seeing the expanding footprint of high-impact CFD."

Numerical dataset comparison tools: FIELDVIEW can be used to numerically compare two datasets side by side. FIELDVIEW 11.1 enables the comparison of datasets on different grid systems. Functions can be created that span two or more datasets. This capability is used to:

-- Evaluate

-- Numerically compare the results from two different solvers

-- Simulation methodologies such as structured vs.
unstructured discretization

-- Validate

-- Compare simulation vs. experimental data from Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) or other sources

-- Assess grid refinement requirements

-- Check convergence progress

-- Interpolate results to ask "next step" questions using dataset sampling


"The new dataset differencing capabilities allow entirely new numerical comparisons. They are fully integrated into FIELDVIEW automation tools and allow users to encapsulate their knowledge and CFD best practices to choose the best solutions to their problems based upon quantitative metrics," said Godo. "We have engine design customers who now run hundreds of simulations with different grids and geometries. Using FIELDVIEW, they post-process the simulations in batch mode overnight and directly compare the results to identify the best design solutions based upon their specific requirements."

Workflow automation improvements: CFD users are increasingly automating series of tasks to improve their productivity, capacity, and to ensure process quality. FIELDVIEW FVX is used to automate post-processing tasks. FIELDVIEW 11.1 enhances FVX, providing an interface to the Python scripting language. This creates a powerful solution that fits into existing workflows and works with Python based applications such as Phoenix Integration's ModelCenter in automated post-processing.

New plug-in toolkit and data readers: FIELDVIEW 11.1 includes new plug-in style readers for FLOW3D and CGNS data. The plug-in style architecture facilitates the development and use of readers for new solvers and data formats. Users with in-house codes and proprietary programming routines quickly develop and deploy custom routines and data readers without recompiling.

Users can explore and share their results using the high performance visualization, presentation, and collaboration capabilities of FIELDVIEW Advanced Technology Viewer. The latest release of FIELDVIEW ATViewer software is available for free download from www.ilight.com