Architecture Technical Overview

This section provides more information about how data is handled in M-Star software and the interaction with hardware. Other processes related to M-Star software operations and quality assurance are also described here.

Software Overview

M-Star CFD is computation fluid dynamics software (CFD) used by engineers and scientists. The software simulates fluid mixing, transport processes, particle motions, chemical reactions, heat transfer and other physics. M-Star focuses on the use of the lattice Boltzmann equations to simulate fluid physics on computer graphical processing units (GPU). This approach allows very complex flow fields to be realized quickly. The software has the following primary components:

  • Pre-Processer: Prepare CAD files, geometry, physics for simulation

  • Solver: Runs simulation and output data files

  • Post-Processer: Analyze output files from Solver

  • Utilities: Other utility programs to execute previews

This software is used on desktop and server environments run by the user. No data is processed on M-Star servers. All calculations and data occur on client resources. The only possible network connection made to third-party resources would occur if the client is using an M-Star operated floating license server.

M-Star CFD is a cross platform application that runs on both Microsoft Windows and various forms of Linux. The Pre and Post Processers will generally run on any resource with a decent GPU. The Solver is also cross compatible on Windows and Linux. To run the solver on GPUs does require an Nvidia GPU. Multi-GPU runs will also require additional hardware such as NVLink, NVSwitch, and Infiniband products. More detail on these subjects is in the documentation. This subject is also discussed in the GPU Topology section.