Panasas and ANSYS Boost Engineering Simulation Productivity

ANSYS 12.0 With Panasas Parallel Storage Reduces Turnaround Time by 200+ Percent.

FREMONT, CA and SOUTHPOINTE, PA - Panasas, Inc., the leading provider of high-performance storage for the world's most performance-intensive applications, and ANSYS, Inc. (NASDAQ: ANSS), a global innovator of simulation software and technologies designed to optimize product development processes, today announced significant performance enhancements in ANSYS® 12.0 software when combined with Panasas' newest products. The combined solution, using Panasas' ActiveStor Series 7, 8 and 9, enables the use of a parallel file system for input and output (I/O) of simulation data files. This hardware/software combination overcomes performance bottlenecks related to conventional network attached storage and achieves significantly higher levels of simulation throughput. Customer field testing has demonstrated improvements in turnaround time of more than 200 percent compared to the previous release running on a network file system (NFS). The combination of ANSYS 12.0 and Panasas storage optimizes a company's engineering resources and helps it leverage Simulation Driven Product Development™.

"Our customers are achieving new levels of productivity using this breakthrough technology, which allows them to successfully deploy simulation on larger-scale computing platforms and to efficiently consider extremely high-fidelity simulations," said Jim Cashman, president and CEO at ANSYS, Inc. "Data intensity is a key concern for users of simulation, and the Panasas storage solution adds value across the full range of software products from ANSYS."

Manufacturers increasingly rely on engineering simulation software from ANSYS and high-performance computing to drive innovations in product and process development. ANSYS customers require a computing and storage infrastructure that scales both processing and data transfer. A study conducted by Panasas, ANSYS and the University of Cambridge, which documented the benefits of the new parallel storage solution, found speedup of up to 2.3 times for total job turnaround and increases in data write speed of 39 times. More information on this study is available at www.panasas.com/isvs/ansys.

"Users of engineering simulation face ever-growing data bottlenecks that, if not resolved, can quickly reduce productivity to non-competitive levels," said Stan Posey, director of industry and applications marketing at Panasas. "Working with ANSYS, we are enabling our mutual customers to grow their competitive advantage by achieving faster time to market, improved product quality and lower product development costs."

"The computer-aided engineering industry continues to accelerate its demand for high performance in application software and cluster computing solutions," commented Monica Schnitger, president of CAE market analyst Schnitger Corporation. "Panasas provides a storage appliance that is fast, simple to install and maintain, and that drives high-cluster efficiency for even the most demanding CAE requirements. ANSYS leadership in I/O and data management will be a distinct competitive advantage to engineering teams seeking to increase their effective use of simulation technology."