There are three more unique software options that I’d like to touch on. One of them was specifically mentioned in a reader reply; I’m sharing the other two in hopes that they might be an appealing alternative if, for whatever reason, the CFD options I mentioned before wouldn’t be a good fit.
Luminary Cloud: This is less a dedicated 3D viscous solver, and more a platform for computationally-intense physics simulations, with a focus on CFD.
The real differentiator is their focus on efficiency and processing speed: they use GPU-accelerated computing, which decreases the time required for meshing and solving a CFD case. Most software exclusively uses a computer’s CPU for computations. Adding in a graphics processing unit (GPU) means the CPU can manage the data and workflow, while the GPU churns through the computations. This is how computers with dedicated graphics cards get significantly better performance in games and CAD work than, say, your typical laptop—they have the raw horsepower to handle the intense processing required.
Luminary takes advantage of that to complete calculations substantially faster. Their website says a customer’s CFD mesh that would usually take seven days to prepare only took 30 minutes to set up and run on Luminary hardware. Even if this is exaggerating, reducing the time to run that simulation from days to hours is, quite frankly, an absurd and incredible efficiency gain.
That substantial time decrease also makes it possible to run far more cases and build out data sets for simulations and machine learning/AI optimizations. To me, the time savings is appealing enough that I’m hoping to try out Luminary for myself.
Stallion 3D: We’re back to CPU-based solvers, but what makes this option stand out is its accessibility.
For one, it can run on your laptop or desktop computer, which removes the need to stand up a high-performance computing cluster or pay for cloud computing resources. This is also appealing from a data security and compliance standpoint, as everything is contained to your local machine. The OpenFOAM wrapper options require the use of their web interface and cloud computing service.
The other point of accessibility is the cost: Stallion 3D’s one-year license is substantially cheaper than many other options. It also offers a reasonably-priced perpetual license! Some cloud-based software options include a finite number of computing “credits” in the purchase price, so once you run a certain number of cases you need to pay extra. But because Stallion 3D runs locally, you get unlimited simulations for what you pay.
Because of these perks and the advertised ease of use, I’m planning to try Stallion 3D when it makes sense for a project (client or personal). I’ll be sure to report back with more detailed thoughts when I do.
I’ll talk about the third option tomorrow.