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Tag: pedro giffuni
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Pedro Giffuni - Working with Engineering Applications in FreeBSD
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, freebsd, engineering applications, pedro giffuni
MP3 (1 byte, 51 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 51 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
In recent years, traditional branches of engineering
like Civil, Chemical, Mechanical, Electrical and
Industrial Engineering are requiring extensive
computing facilities for their needs. Several well
known labs (Sandia, Lawrence Livermore) rely on
huge clusters to do all types of complex analysis
that were unthinkable a couple of decades ago. While
the free BSD variants share the environment with
traditional UNIX systems, frequently used for such
computations, it was not common to find adequate
free software packages to carry complex calculations.
Eventually commercial versions of important math
related packages started to appear for the Linux
platform. Even when the big packages were distant,
the BSDs learned and adapted in resourceful ways:
Matlab and Mathematica, running under Linux emulation,
demanded functionality from the BSDs and NetBSD
implemented a signal trampoline to be able to run
AutoCAD with IRIX binary compatibility. A notable
project that was always available under a free
license was Berkeley's Spice circuit analysis
program, however it was an exception rather than
the rule. Even when the scientific community pressed
for a while to get other important tools like NASA's
FEA package Nastran under a free license, the
objective of being able to access and enhance open
scientific tools was elusive. About a decade ago
the situation started to improve: FreeBSD's ports
system started growing exponentially, first with a
high content in the math category, afterwards with
a CAD section and after sustained growth in those
categories a science section was created. This
growth was mostly pushed by Universities and their
research projects and in general are not well known
with respect to the commercial counterparts. I
started porting math/engineering code for FreeBSD
around 1996. Back then it was absolutely unthinkable
for a Mechanical Engineer to depend only on FreeBSD
for it's daily work. The situation nowadays is
different: there are some very high quality engineering
analysis packages like EDF's Code Aster, with more
than 12 years of professional development, that
just can't be ignored. A Finite Element package,
like Code Aster, can easily cost 5000 US$, is priced
according to the maximum problem size it can solve,
can require yearly licenses, and is rarely available
with source code. In NASTRAN's case the source code
is only available for US citizens under a yearly
fee. Free software does have serious limitations
though; just like in office applications there are
proprietary CAD formats or sometimes the package
simply doesn't have the required functionality.
Having the sources, of course, always has the
advantage of being able to implement (or pay for)
some specific functionality you might need. Many
commercial packages have been recently ported to
Linux, but even when they gain some of the advantages
of an open environment they still have yet another
limitation: they have been very slow to make use
of the multicored features of the new processors
in the market, a huge limitation now that the speed
war between processors has been limited by the
overheating problem. The objective of the talk is
to give an overview of several CAD/CAE packages
that have been made available recently as part of
FreeBSD's ports system and the decisions that were
made to port them. BRLCAD and Varkon are two CAD
utilities that made a transition from closed source
to an open environment and in the process in the
process of getting ported to BSD have gained greater
portability and general "bug" fixes critical for
their consolidation as usable and maintainable
projects. There are also some tricks that have not
been well documented: it is possible to enable
threads and some extra optimizations on some packages,
and it is also possible to replace the standard
BLAS library with the faster GOTO BLAS without
rebuilding the package. It is also possible to build
the packages optimized for a clustered environment,
but perhaps what is most interesting of all is how
all the packages interrelate with each other and
can turn FreeBSD into a complete enginering
environment. No OS distribution so far is offering
all the engineering specific utilities offered
through FreeBSD's ports system: from design to
visualization, passing through analysis FreeBSD is
becoming an option that can't be ignored, and best
of all, it is an effort that will benefit not only
FreeBSD but the wider audience.
Pedro F. Giffuni M. Sc. Industrial Engineering -
University of Pittsburgh Mechanical Engineer -
Universidad Nacional de Colombia I was born in
Bogota, Colombia but I am an Italian citizen. My
experience with computers started when I was about
12 years old With the TRS-80 Color Computer first
using Basic and the OS-9. I studied electronics for
3 years but became tired of worrying about "whatever
happened to electrons in there" and moved to
Mechanical Engineering. For a while I rested from
the computer world until the Internet came stepping
along. I started using FreeBSD around 1995 and soon
fell in love with the idea of being able to install
a complete version of UNIX from the net with just
one floppy. After submitting a the 999th port to
the FreeBSD project Walnut Creek was kind enough
to give me a subscription for several years to
FreeBSD's CD-ROM. Since then I've been on and off
porting software packages or fixing the bugs I have
caused while porting them. Of course there has
always been great respect for the other BSDs and
their wonderful license and while I've given up on
the idea of one day seeing a "UnifiedBSD" I am glad
to see different approaches sharing ideas in a
healthful environment.
Keywords: BSD, engineering, CAE, CAD, math, mechanical,
FreeBSD ports
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