MICAD, JEC, Paris, April 5 2005 - ESI Group, leading provider of digital simulation software for prototyping and manufacturing processes, today announced the release of ProCAST 2005, a comprehensive finite element software package for foundry simulation. ProCAST 2005 offers an efficient and accurate 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 enables customers to achieve unmatched performance as simulation tasks are distributed amongst several processors running in parallel, at a very competitive cost. The release provides an industrial and highly scalable version on Linux clusters and UNIX multiprocessor platforms.

“With parallel processing, even the most complex processes can be simulated overnight allowing foundries to do more mold design iterations in less time”, says Dominique Lefebvre, Casting Solutions Product Manager, ESI Group. “This new DMP version was specifically tuned for small to medium size parallel hardware configurations to deliver high performance at a very competitive cost. Furthermore, the hardware configuration, number of CPU and interconnect switch, can be adapted to meet the end-user requirements in terms of turn around times.”

For optimal scalability, the parallelization of ProCAST 2005 relies on the 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. Higher scalability can be obtained with more powerful interconnect for up to 32 processors.

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

ESI Group’s Casting Solutions

Casting process simulation is now widely accepted as an important tool in product design and process development to improve yield and casting quality. ESI Group's casting portfolio includes ProCAST, CALCOSOFT, for fast and efficient modeling of continuous casting processes and PAM-QUIKCAST, the finite difference solution for casting process evaluation.

About ESI Group

ESI Group is a pioneer and world-leading provider of digital simulation software for prototyping and manufacturing processes that take into account the physics of materials. ESI Group has developed an entire suite of coherent, industry oriented applications to realistically simulate a product’s behavior during testing, to fine-tune the manufacturing processes in accordance with the desired product performance, and to evaluate the environment’s impact on product usage. ESI Group’s products, which have a proven track record in manufacturing and have been combined in multi-trade value chains, represent a unique collaborative, virtual engineering solution, known as the Virtual Try-Out Space (VTOS), enabling virtual prototypes to be improved in a continuous manner. By drastically reducing costs and development lead times, VTOS solutions offer major competitive advantages by progressively eliminating the need for physical prototypes. ESI Group is listed on the Nouveau Marché of Euronext Paris, and generated sales of €60m in 2004. The company employs almost 500 high-level specialists worldwide, and covers more than 30 countries. For further information, visit www.esi-group.com.

ESI Group – Press Relations
Nathalie David-Franc
Phone : 33(0)1 41 73 58 35
nathalie.david-franc@esi-group.com

Press release and picture can be downloaded from ESI Group website: www.esi-group.com