Professor Umberto Colombo, President of the Jury of the Pirelli Award, said of the Jury's response to the SGI nomination, "When we looked at the projects created by internationally recognized SGI customers and heard their testimonials, it became clear that SGI high-performance computing and 3D graphics visualization technologies are the best instruments to power scientific research and to educate the public about new research findings."

Engineers at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis to determine the cause of a catastrophic failure in a recuperative flameless thermal oxidizer (RFTO), used for the destruction of hazardous compounds. When the unit's feed tubes melted, resulting in system failure, it was unclear whether the cause was a design flaw or operator error. Physical examination of the unit could not conclusively resolve the issue, so INEEL engineers were asked to recreate the failure scenario as a computer simulation. Working from data in the operation logs, they analyzed the last run of the oxidizer using CFD. The results clearly showed why the tubes melted. "The design of this particular model was such that there were recirculation eddies in the inlet plenum," explains Mike Rynearson, a Principal Engineer at INEEL. "These eddies caused below normal air flow into one of the feed tubes. That, combined with higher than normal propane levels at startup and the hot soak bed condition, caused the oxidation front to move into the low flow tube, causing it to overheat and fail. Once it melted, the others quickly followed.

The Quadro4 900 XGL set records for all three benchmarks: 92.76 for C2001, 123.86 (average of high/low scores) for MAXbench v3.1 using the MAXtreme driver, and 103.80 for ProCDRS-03. Those numbers are 10–20% faster than the previous top scores.

The workstation-class graphics card is available with the purchase of new workstations from selected vendors such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard and carry a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $1,495.

Phasing out over the next 3 years:

• HP Omnibook (laptop)
• HP Kayak (windows workstation)
• HP Vectra (windows pc)
• HP Jornada (pda)
• HP Netserver (small business server)
• TRU64 (DEC OS)

With the end of TRU64, the last remnant of the DEC Alpha workstation is gone. You may recall, that Compaq transfered the Alpha processor to Intel shortly after purchasing DEC.

The primary challenge in designing NASCAR vehicles is to coax as much horsepower out of the engines as possible. The "stock" V8 engines, although limited to 358 cubic inches in displacement, can be modified to produce up to 750 horsepower, enabling the cars to reach speeds of over 200 mph on the banked oval race tracks.

Hendrick Motorsports (home of driver Jeff Gordon) engineering group manager Jim Wall uses a complete suite of SDRC software, including Imageware, for advanced surfacing and reverse engineering. "We have 99 percent of our engine in I-deas at the component level," says Wall. "We can use their CFD tools to analyze flow and then use FEA for stress analysis and checking structural integrity," he says. "And then once we're satisfied that the design meets our criteria, we generate machine tool setups to produce the parts in-house."

As part of its expanded Partnership for Innovative Learning, PTC will provide educators with its Pro/DESKTOP and Pro/ENGINEER design software, affordable teacher training, instructional materials and other resources that are often too costly for school systems and institutions of higher education.

PTC's program allows children as young as nine to think and create in three dimensions with sophisticated design software typically used by manufacturers.

Additional information about how to participate in the Partnership for Innovative Learning may be obtained by visiting the web site or by e-mailing pil@ptc.com.