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Just announced for Windows and Unix, COMSOL’s leading scientific software for multiphysics modeling is now available for Apple’s OS X v10.3 Panther. Macintosh users can benefit from the increase in speed and memory efficiency introduced with the groundbreaking FEMLAB 3 technology and exchange models with users working on other major platforms.

Burlington, MA (April 15, 2004)—COMSOL is broadening the reach of FEMLAB, its powerful scientific-modeling software, by adding support for the Macintosh. This innovative package solves partial differential equations (PDEs) in engineering and scientific contexts, especially in the field of multiphysics. Its developers recognize the importance of the Macintosh in scientific, research and educational settings. So, just weeks after the initial release of version 3.0 for platforms including Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris and HP-UX, COMSOL is providing this tool to the Macintosh community, as well.

In fact, FEMLAB 3.0a is the first native Macintosh implementation of scientific software that addresses multiphysics modeling. “Many of our early adopters ran FEMLAB on the Macintosh as a Matlab add-on,” notes Bernt Nilsson, VP of Marketing at COMSOL. “Now they can also enjoy all the benefits of running it as a standalone package. Further, these users don’t pay any performance penalties; when they get involved in large projects where FEMLAB’s capabilities are indispensable, they can access all the power of our latest release.”

Version 3.0a of FEMLAB builds upon the innovative technology introduced just several months ago with version 3, which the developers rewrote completely in C++ and Java. That rewrite achieved a major leap in computational speed and memory efficiency, allowing the software to handle much larger problems, yet in less time. Further, users may choose to run the software standalone as a native Mac application, or they can call upon the package’s Matlab-integration features to aid in the design and execution of interdisciplinary applications.

Not only have improvements to FEMLAB’s core computational engine significantly increased its performance, with version 3.0a users can take advantage of solvers optimized for both time and memory. A new preconditioner adds speed for advanced modeling, such as large 3D Navier-Stokes problems that are common in fluid-dynamics applications. Because of this power and flexibility, Macintosh users can perform all their scientific-modeling work under Apple’s latest operating system, Mac OS X v10.3 Panther.

Thanks to its new C++ and Java-based architecture, FEMLAB has not only become faster, it is now easier for the development team to port the software to other platforms. Explains Johan Linde, leader of Macintosh development at COMSOL, “By choosing platform-independent Java for the graphical user interface, it was an easy task to move FEMLAB 3 to the Macintosh. The result is a native implementation with the genuine look and feel of a Macintosh application."

Cross-platform compatibility is another key benefit. Scientists can take a model someone has developed on one platform and know that it will run without modification on any of the other supported platforms. Thus researchers will find using FEMLAB a convenient way to communicate sophisticated models and simulations within organizations and as well as exchange them with colleagues around the world.

No matter what platform it runs on, FEMLAB 3.0a is designed for high-performance modeling. Problem setup and modeling takes place quickly and easily thanks to application-specific interfaces where users work within an environment that presents them with well-known discipline-specific methods and terminology. In addition, the built-in solvers provide computational speed and memory handling for advanced modeling on large problems.

One example of the power of FEMLAB for the Macintosh comes from Prof. Bruce Finlayson at the University of Washington in Seattle.
“I ran a 3D linear problem with 267,293 degrees of freedom, specifically, one solving the convective diffusion equation when the velocity is known. I was astounded when it ran in 87 seconds, very impressive given that the first solution of this problem on the previous version took many iterations. Now it runs smoothly at once.”

To compare FEMLAB3.0a executing on different platforms, the developers have turned to a suite of benchmark models. The test measures CPU time up to the point where the model reaches prescribed solution accuracy.

Application	Problem size, Degrees of freedom	Solution Time PC*	Solution Time, Mac*
Chemical Engineering	83,363	2 min 45 s	2 min 31 s
Structural Mechanics	39,300	4 min 15 s	2 min 8 s
Electromagnetics Wave Propagation	24,666	5 min 46 s	4 min 51 s

* A Macintosh G5 with a 2 GHz Power PC processor and an HP nx 7000 PC with a 1.5 GHz Pentium M processor were used in the measurement.

FEMLAB 3.0a runs under Mac OS X v10.3 Panther, Windows Me/98/2000/NT 4.0/XP as well as Linux, Solaris and HP-UX. The minimum system configuration is a G4 or a Pentium 2 processor, 256M bytes of RAM (512M bytes recommended) and an OpenGL-compatible graphics card.

FEMLAB – which stands for Finite Element Modeling Laboratory – is an advanced software package for the modeling and simulation of any physical process described with partial differential equations. The latest version, FEMLAB 3.0a, features high-performance state-of-the-art solvers that address extremely large problems yet quickly yield accurate results. Working in an easy-to-use graphical interface or from the command line, users choose from several ways to describe their problems in 1D, 2D and 3D. A particular strength of the package is its PDE modeling capability, whereby it can link and solve coupled equations from varied fields such as structural mechanics, electromagnetics, fluid flow, and chemistry – all in the same model and all at the same time. These and many other features make FEMLAB 3.0a an unprecedented modeling environment for research, product development and education.

COMSOL was founded in 1986 in Stockholm, Sweden, and has grown to include offices in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and a US presence with offices in Burlington, MA, and Los Angeles, CA. Additional information about the company is available at www.comsol.com.

TRADEMARKS

FEMLAB is a registered trademark of COMSOL AB. Matlab is a registered trademark of The MathWorks, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.