ESI Announces Pilot Version of Adjoint Solver for Design Optimization
March 15 2012 - 1:00PM
Business Wire
ESI Group, pioneer and world-leading solution provider
in virtual prototyping for manufacturing industries,
announces the launch of the pilot version of its Adjoint
Optimization Solver, developed over the past 2 years thanks to a
close collaboration between ESI and Intel. This mutually beneficial
project brings the Intel Fortran 90 compiler to a
unique level of performance, allowing the use of adjoint-based
optimization methods across a wide range of industry
sectors.
Numerical optimization has proved to be an essential technology
to achieve some ever-increasing requirements of the automotive
sector. Optimizing the shape of a vehicle allows industrials to
achieve greater fuel efficiency while using innovative, lighter
materials. Numerical simulation can be implemented at each and
every step of product design to predict the aerodynamics,
aero-acoustics or even the aero-thermal performance levels
resulting from a specific product design.
Standard CFD solvers versus adjoint-based optimization
method
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses are very demanding
at an industrial level because of the number and duration of the
computations they require. Further-more, the genetic algorithms
traditionally used in structural optimization are not suited for
CFD optimization. Gradient-based methods, which converge to the
optimum in many fewer iterations, require the computation of the
cost function’s gradient, which is not provided by standard
industrial CFD solvers.
Addressing these problems, the adjoint-based optimization method
has progressively emerged as a preferred method for CFD
calculations. This method has been recognized as most reliable by
major aerospace companies over the past decade and is now being
adopted by the automotive sector.
A synergy of programming technological advances now allows
the use of the adjoint-based optimization method on an industrial
scale
In an effort to make this method accessible to various
industries, and to ease up code maintenance, ESI has recently
worked towards an independent discrete adjoint solver that takes
the form of a dynamic library coded in advanced Fortran 90.
This library aims to abstract all the derivative machinery
required for assembling and solving the adjoint system,
irrespective of any discretization scheme of the application code.
It has been fully validated within ACE+ Suite, ESI’s multiphysics
software.
In support of this project, ESI and Intel have engaged in a
fruitful collaboration over the last 2 years, bringing the Intel
F90 compiler to a unique level of performance with respect to most
advanced F90 features.
"Intel was delighted to help ESI build their advanced solver
with the Intel Fortran Compiler. This is a nice illustration of
benefits of Intel’s long-standing enabling engagement in code
optimization with ESI. This collaboration gave ESI the added
performance they wanted and helped improve the Intel compiler for
all customers,” says Laurent Duhem, Software Application
Engineer at Intel.
For more ESI news, visit: www.esi-group.com/newsroom
About Intel
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is a world leader in computing innovation.
The company designs and builds the essential technologies that
serve as the foundation for the world’s computing devices.
Additional information about Intel is available at
newsroom.intel.com and blogs.intel.com. Intel is a trademark of
Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries.
About ESI Group
ESI is a pioneer and world-leading solution provider in virtual
prototyping for manufacturing industries that takes into account
the physics of materials. ESI has developed an extensive suite of
coherent, industry-oriented applications to realistically simulate
a product’s behavior during testing, to fine-tune manufacturing
processes in accordance with desired product performance, and to
evaluate the environment’s impact on performance. ESI Group is
listed in compartment C of NYSE Euronext Paris.
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