LEBANON, N.H.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 27, 2003--Fluent Inc., world leader in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, releases version 4.1 of its Icepak(TM) electronics cooling design software. The newest version of Icepak builds on the technologies introduced in Icepak 4.0 for the industry's fastest time-to-solution. Its combination of nested non-conformal meshing and unstructured meshing strategies, including assembly meshing, let the designer build a more computationally-efficient and accurate model faster. "Icepak 4.1's new 'Nested Assembly Meshing' allows the user to seamlessly bring far more detail into the model, to retain geometric shape fidelity, and improve accuracy, and it reduces mesh counts by 30% to 3 times compared to Icepak 4.0," says Icepak product manager Rajesh Nair.

Building on a Strong Foundation--Users respond

Fluent is the technology leader that brought object-based modeling, unstructured meshing, parallel computing, zoom-in modeling, network modeling, and non-conformal assembly meshing technologies for the first time to the electronics cooling design community. Icepak 4.0, released in the summer of 2002, receives resounding reviews from users for its productivity-enhancing power, and has helped Icepak's market share to grow robustly during this lean economic period.

"Icepak's new ability of meshing assemblies separately has brought down my mesh count from 515,190 to 178,459. Thus, the results were achieved about three times faster and I investigated various design variations right within a day. I'm delighted and so was my boss!" says Christina Bohm of Motorola GmbH, Munich, Germany.

George Ozuna of Hewlett-Packard was one of the beta testers for Icepak 4.1. Remarking on his experience with the performance improvements, he says: "I had been using Icepak 4.0 when I was asked to conduct an analysis on a large server. The server was larger than a 1U unit and had no planes of symmetry to use for simplification. It was necessary to model all of the significant structure up stream of the areas of interest in order to get a good approximation of the airflow volume and direction. The model was first analyzed using the one level deep non-conformal meshing in Icepak 4.0. This model was too large to solve on a MS Windows OS system, due to the limitation of the 2GB of memory per MS-Windows process. Icepak 4.1 was made available to me and I was able to take advantage of the Nested Assembly Meshing option that allowed me to analyze a system that I couldn't using Icepak 4.0, and do it in more detail than previously possible."

Speed and Other Productivity Enhancements

How much faster? "Users can expect to see 30% to 3 times faster solution to their complex design problems depending on the levels of nesting possible in the model," states Nair.

Icepak 4.1 also adds more than a dozen new and improved models and options to cap its performance enhancements. The list includes blower objects, new turbulence models, improved fan models, enhanced transient network modeling, and faster parametric solutions.

Pricing and Availability

Icepak 4.1 is available on UNIX, NT, and Linux platforms. It is provided at no additional cost to all current Icepak users who have chosen to purchase upgrades along with their Icepak licenses. Icepak license fees depend on the number of seats purchased. Annual license fees include unlimited technical support.

About Fluent

Fluent is the world's largest provider of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software and consulting services. Fluent's software is used for simulation, visualization, and prediction of fluid flow, heat and mass transfer, and chemical reactions. It is a vital part of the computer-aided engineering (CAE) process for companies around the world and in almost every manufacturing industry. Using Fluent's software, product development, design and research engineers build virtual prototypes and simulate the performance of proposed and existing designs, which helps them to optimize, troubleshoot, scale-up, and retrofit. Use of CFD software reduces time-to-market by reducing the need for costly physical testing and prototyping. Fluent's corporate headquarters is located in Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA, with local offices in Belgium, England, France, Germany, India, Italy, and Sweden. Fluent's Asia Pacific headquarters is located in Tokyo, Japan. Its CFD software is also available around the world through joint ventures, partnerships, and distributors.

FLUENT(R) and Icepak(TM) are trademarks of Fluent Inc.

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CONTACT: Fluent Inc.
             Jennifer Correa, 603-643-2600 Ext. 668
             
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