Where does numerical simulation go? Even during the past decades, the details of the simulation models were following increasing computer speed. The faster the computers became, the bigger the models became. It is great that we can cover more and more details and more and more physics, but in doing so, we always stay at the same solver runtime/turnaround time. This leaves me asking myself, “Don’t we need two directions?”
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My colleague Narayan Rangarajan, Altair Engineering team leader, has contributed the following post:

If someone came to me today and said that a solar powered server farm is sustained green computing, I would say it’s only half of the equation. Here’s some trivia about solar energy:

1. Solar panels typically convert sunlight into electricity with an efficiency of only 10 to 20 percent.
2. The carbon footprint in manufacturing solar cells is high.
3. Creating solar cells is a high-energy process – it’s not easy to melt silica.

So this brings us to the question, what is sustainable? In my opinion, the top three would be reuse, eliminating waste and innovation. Let’s look at what each one means.

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My colleague Narayan Rangarajan, Altair Engineering team leader, has contributed the following guest post:

I recently read an interesting article that stated “two Google searches on a desktop computer produce 14g of CO₂, which is roughly the equivalent of boiling an electric kettle.”  While Google claims a much smaller CO₂ cost, the math is inescapable. With over 2 million searches a day, it is “the server farms, not the animal farms, that will be increasingly responsible for global warming!” Read More