The rise of 64-bit computing in technical environments is attributed to two primary benefits of 64-bit systems: floating point performance and virtual address space.

Floating point performance of 64-bit Itanium 2-based systems is significantly faster— approximately 45 percent, by one measure—than the floating point performance of IA-32 systems. On industry benchmark results reported to the SPEC organization, the 1GHz HP Workstation zx6000 posted the world’s fastest floating point performance— 1,356, and HP expects to soon post the even-higher result of 1,410. By comparison, the fastest IA-32 posting—which was for a 2.8GHz Dell 340 Precision workstation—was just 938.

With 32-bit computing, there is a growing disconnect between the kernel’s virtual address space and the memory requirements of large servers and workstations. Despite the availability of 32-bit Intel systems that can be configured with up to 64GB of physical memory, most operating systems will support only 16GB of physical memory. That’s because the kernel doesn’t have the room to support any more. These systems cannot support data set requirements larger than 3 GB per process—a severe limitation for many technical computing applications.

By comparison, 64-bit systems have truly massive virtual address spaces, and therefore allow the kernel to manage the massive physical memories required for large databases, high-performance computing (HPC) environments and systems that run many applications concurrently.

For a closer look, read the white paper.

At this time, only the german version is updated. The english version will follow soon.

The approach adopted was to bring together three important and recent developments in this field. These elements are:

1. The newly published ERCOFTAC Best Practice Guidelines for the application of CFD.
2. The existing ITTC guidelines for uncertainty analysis in CFD. These include manuals on: uncertainty assessment methodology, guidelines for RANS codes, and examples for resistance and flow.
3. The development of Application Procedures for particular types of marine CFD calculations, eg. propeller flows, non-linear free surface flow etc., using 1 above combined with specific know-how and specialist knowledge.

This has brought MARNET-CFD in line with new initiatives being supported by the European Commission in the area of Quality and Trust in Industrial CFD, and should bring significant benefits in know-how, links to other Networks and databases, and approaches to best practice.

The FLASH code is a modular, adaptive, parallel simulation code capable of handling general compressible flow problems in astrophysical environments. FLASH is written in Fortran 90 and C, and is freely available. FLASH is distributed as source code, and has runs on most UNIX platforms. More information can be found at http://flash.uchicago.edu.

All users of previous versions are encouraged to upgrade. The download is available at:
https://flash.uchicago.edu/code_download/ (note the 's' in https). You will need your username and password from previous downloads.

New users can request the code at:
http://flash.uchicago.edu/public/handlePublic.py?submit=codeRequest

The CFX suite of integrated software provides Siemens with the ability to simulate and visualize flows inside a turbine, enabling a better understanding of the issues involved in creating superior designs. Siemens Power Generation, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany, has used CFX software to develop design rules for highly-efficient steam turbine blades that were subsequently employed to design the world’s most efficient steam turbine to date, with 48.5 percent gross efficiency, for the VEAG power plant in Boxberg, Germany.

Grid generation for complex geometries can be a time consuming process, where experience is needed and the right tools are essential. eFAME provides an internet solution which is based on the powerful automatic mesh generation tool FAME by AVL.

Mesh generation for complex geometries has never been easier. Just submit a surface description of your computational domain in the commonly used STL-file format and the eFAME mesh generation engine will provide you, within a short time, with comprehensive information on the automatically generated mesh. Then you decide if the mesh is of value to you and if you would like to obtain the corresponding mesh file in the universal file format at the specified fee.