DEFENSE

Cray and CD-adapco, an internationally based software developer and consultancy specializing in computational fluid dynamics (CFD), announced today that CD-adapco has purchased two additional Cray XD1 supercomputers to help boost productivity in the company's growing consulting business. A six-chassis, 72-processor Cray XD1 system for CD-adapco's European Headquarters office in London and a three-chassis, 36-processor system for the Paris office will be added to the 72-processor system that is already successfully running production jobs in the Melville, NY, North American Headquarters office. CD-adapco's STAR-CD and STAR-CCM+ CFD simulation codes provide computer-aided engineering (CAE) solutions for designing and manufacturing products and processes in the automotive, aerospace, biomedical, building, chemical process, oil and gas, turbomachinery and other industries. The recently released STAR-CD v3.26 offers a number of innovative features aimed at enhancing engine simulations, including modeling techniques that let design engineers more accurately simulate combustion in the new direct-injection automobile engines. STAR-CCM+ contains the revolutionary new polyhedral-based finite volume solution approach, which is both robust with respect to automatic meshing and accurate solution of very complicated geometry and faster than other methods for even the largest problems being attacked in industry today. "CD-adapco is pleased to announce that the Cray XD1 supercomputer successfully completed the rigorous quality assurance needed for STAR-CD certification," said Peter S. MacDonald, president of CD-adapco. "Using a battery of benchmark tests, we've certified that our simulation codes can leverage the Cray XD1 system's direct connect architecture to deliver outstanding performance and scalability for CAE clients. Now we're ready to give more of our employees access to the Cray XD1 system with the new installations in London and Paris. We expect these systems to provide our consultancy with an important productivity edge." CD-adapco has been using the six-chassis Cray XD1 system installed at their New York consulting office to run a wide variety of industrial problems. Results indicate a 20 percent performance advantage over cluster systems at the 32-processor range. This accelerated performance has significantly increased job throughput on a daily basis, which is essential to the success of the business. "These purchases validate our strong relationship with CD-adapco, and underscore the advantages that the Cray XD1 supercomputer is capable of delivering to the many engineers and researches who use STAR-CD," said Dr. Himanshu Misra, CAE Business Manager at Cray. "Because it is purpose-built for compute-intensive applications such as CFD, the Cray XD1 system excels at handling the demands that CD-adapco's code makes on processor utilization while solving large, real-world problems. The system offers exceptional value for companies and CAE workgroups of all sizes."