Parallel simulation software

French  digital simulation software provider

has recently released ProCAST 2005, a finite element software package for foundry simulation.

ProCAST 2005 offers a solution for a wide range of processes and alloys, from high and low-pressure die casting to sand casting and investment casting.

The new DMP (Distributed Memory Parallel) version distributes a task amongst several processors running in parallel.

The parallelism in ProCAST 2005 relies on what’s called dynamic domain decomposition technology. Automatically activated in ProCAST 2005, this feature is used to distribute a task on multiple processors.

The finite element mesh of the CAD model is partitioned in as many sub-domains as there are processors. To be efficient, the decomposition needs to provide a balanced repartition of the workload and a minimal interface between the different partitions in order to reduce the data exchange between processors.

As the casting is gradually filled during the simulation, the load balancing continuously evolves. To maintain optimal scalability, ProCAST 2005 automatically updates the domain decomposition at regular intervals.

The performance of the parallel solver depends on the size of the model, the type of application and system components such as interconnects related to interprocessor communication. Results obtained on a Linux cluster with Gigabit Ethernet interconnect show an acceleration of the speed of analysis up to 6 times for both filling and solidification on 8 processors.

The ProCAST 2005 parallel version is available on Linux hardware vendors supported clusters as well as UNIX multiprocessor platforms from IBM and SGI.