A recent collaboration between Polyflow S.A. and Compaq has made available more powerful computing resources for demanding simulations. POLYFLOW makes use of an efficient direct coupled solver which, in some cases, can lead to large memory requirements. While most applications perform better when the memory needs are met through the use of increased RAM, the POLYFLOW solver functions in such a way that these needs can be met using swap space instead.

Instead of modeling a short section of a twin screw extruder, longer sections are now easily handled with the memory-addressing improvements in POLYFLOW 3.8.1.

On computer systems using 32-bit architectures, a practical limit on swap space exists. While this is not a limiting factor for most simulations today, it could easily impact simulations in the future. Compaq has recently introduced a COMPAQ Alpha machine that uses a new 64-bit architecture for memory addressing, where the addressable swap space can be increased by several orders of magnitude over the 32-bit machines. The collaboration with Compaq has been focused on ways to improve the POLYFLOW solver so that it can function more efficiently on 64-bit machines of this type. The modifications are now available in POLYFLOW 3.8.1. As a result of this effort, large problems can be tackled routinely without practical system-size limitations.

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