Acceleware Accelerates Matrix Computation up to 20 Times

Calgary, Canada based Acceleware develops and markets acceleration products that bring performance and speed to today's most strenuous and challenging computational and/or data-intensive demands.With Acceleware's products, reduction in run times for data processing and simulation applications by more than 35 times has been observed.

The company's Accelerator™ Board and ClusterInABox™ Workstation solutions deliver a competitive advantage for companies where compute and data-intensive applications are central to the performance of product development cycles by radically enhancing the ability to effectively interpret vast amounts of data. The company's target markets include names in mainly following industries : electromagnetic, energy, biomedical, pharmaceuticals, industrial, and military.

Last Week, Acceleware has announced the acceleration of matrix equation solvers found in simulation and data processing software commonly used for scientific and industrial applications.

These new methods significantly extend the problem solving capability of the Acceleware Platform, allowing a broad new range of application providers the opportunity to deliver the compelling performance of multi-core and hardware accelerators to their technical computing customers. With matrix methods added into the Acceleware Platform, end users of these advanced techniques can benefit by solving their linear equation problems up to 20 times faster.

‘The technical computing market has experienced explosive growth over the past four years at 20% a year, and is expected to continue in a high growth mode. Users running multi-physic codes, electromagnetic, mechanical, fluid dynamics, EDA and oil/gas codes are driving this growth and require major speed-ups on their applications to gain a competitive advantage. At the same time, processors and systems are becoming more complex, making it harder to obtain the required speed-ups. Linear solvers are used ubiquitously in scientific and industry applications, simulation, and data processing, so speed-ups in this area directly helps end users, providing faster time-to-market and increased scientific insights,’ said Earl C Joseph, program vice president of HPC at IDC.

Acceleware’s matrix equation solver technology will be applicable for users of various electronic design automation, mechanical, fluid dynamics, microwave, photonics, signal integrity/power integrity tools and integrated circuit software tools, significantly reducing the simulation time in their design flow. This allows semiconductor, wireless handset, and consumer and industrial product manufacturers to bring higher-performance, feature-rich products to market sooner, giving them a competitive edge and transforming the way they solve problems. Oil and gas companies also use matrix methods to solve larger, more complicated reservoir simulations and to help pin-point new oil reserves faster, and with higher resolution.

By developing this matrix equation solver technology, which is based on Nvidia's CUDA C-language development environment, the reach of the Acceleware Platform extends into new markets, adding incremental value to existing users of Acceleware solutions. Acceleware’s latest capability speeds up large, sparse linear equation computational algorithms by up to 20 times.

For more information, visit Acceleware webpage for its products.

ACEnet & Mechdyne launch 'Data Cave' for 3-D Visualization of Complex Systems like Stars

Over the last five years, universities across Canada have been organizing themselves into regional groups to acquire and operate large-scale high performance computing (HPC) facilities for research. ACEnet ("Atlantic Computational Excellence Network") is Atlantic Canada's entry into this national fabric of HPC facilities. It is a partnership of seven institutions, including Memorial University of Newfoundland, University of New Brunswick, Mount Allison University, Dalhousie University, St. Francis Xavier University, St. Mary's University and the University of Prince Edward Island.

Scientific researchers in the ACEnet now have access to advanced three-dimensional (3D) visualization capability in a 5.8 Megapixel Data Cave designed and installed by Mechdyne. [Mechdyne Corporation, headquartered in Marshalltown, Iowa, USA, is the world’s largest company dedicated to consulting and development of immersive, networked and collaborative visualization systems]

On June 10, the ACEnet launched 'Data Cave', which projects stereoscopic 3D imagery onto three wall surfaces and the floor, allows researchers to step inside and interact with computer-generated images in ways that can provide new insight and understanding.

At the grand opening, representatives from the nine ACEnet member universities and other VIPs experienced the immersive visualization for complex scientific concepts, such as an astrophysicists’ calculations of how light and heat swirl away from an exploding star. As a scientific tool, the Data Cave will save scientists a lot of time and improves their ability to interpret the results of extremely complex calculations. Conventional visualization of a star, for example, would create two-dimensional slices that do not really convey useful information. With immersive visualisation, they can better see the 3D turbulence and other characteristics of a star, and can see the effect of modifications in the data or in their calculations much more quickly.

The Data Cave display system uses four Mechdyne Beacon SX+ projectors to generate a 1,450 x 1,050 pixel image on each of four screens measuring 10 ft. X 7.5 ft. The image is seen in stereo by users wearing LCD active shutter glasses. An integrated real time motion tracking system monitors the position of a primary user, maintaining an optimal viewing perspective and allowing interaction with the images using handheld control devices.

Since the Data Cave is based on the Mechdyne Flex display system design, it also can be easily configured as a 30ft long flat screen or as an angled ‘immersive theatre’ in addition to the cubic Cave format. The tracking system covers the entire 30ft width of the flat screen, three times the usual tracked space of immersive environments. This flexibility allows ACEnet scientists, such as geophysicists, to display data in formats commonly used in such fields as oil exploration and development.

Mechdyne worked closely with Sun Microsystems, which as ACEnet’s computing systems partner provided four Ultra 40 Workstations as the graphics engines for the display system. Mechdyne also collaborated with Iowa State University, a pioneer in using Cave-type display systems, to provide 3D visualisation software for the ACEnet Data Cave.