Nvidia’s Tesla C2070 sits inside a workstation or server and features 448 CUDA cores and 6GB memory dedicated for GPU compute

Two of the largest automakers in Europe are evaluating Nvidia’s GPU compute technology for analysing the structural behaviour of large engine models.

Testing in Abaqus 6.11, the latest release the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) product suite from Dassault’s Simulia, Nvidia’s Quadro and Tesla Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), coupled with Intel Xeon CPUs, were said to run Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) simulations twice as fast as with CPUs alone.

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AMD’s FirePro V5900 can deliver exceptional performance in 3D CAD applications when given the chance.

Being a journalist is not the glamorous life you may think. I spent most of yesterday in a darkened room testing the new AMD FirePro V5900 graphics card. You can read about my findings here.

With a list price of $599 the FirePro V5900 is targeted squarely at the CAD market and offers an exciting proposition for those who work with applications and datasets that aren’t limited by the speed of the CPU, including Catia, NX, and 3ds Max.

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A Nike sneaker recreated as a mesh in Photofly - as previewed at Autodesk University in December 2010

Next Thursday Autodesk is due to update The Photo Scene Editor for Project Photofly, one of the most exciting technology previews we’ve seen on its Labs website.

For those that don’t know, Project Photofly automatically converts photographs shot around an object or a scene into a 3D model. This new version will be able to create textured meshes rather than just point clouds.

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The new MINI John Cooper Works World Rally Car (WRC).

I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for MINIs - my first car was a Blue 1985 Austin MINI City E complete with classic cockpit, spluttering engine, and an inability to overtake without a perfectly timed run-up.

Of course my rusty bucket is a world away from the sporty BMW-designed car that has taken over and they don’t come more sporty than the new MINI John Cooper Works World Rally Car (WRC), which will feature in this year’s World Rally Championship.

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The Cryo Octane EDP-WS X5680 is a brand new water-cooled workstation. It features two overclocked six core Xeon X5680 processors running at 4.50GHz+ (35% faster than the stock Intel CPU) up to 96GB RAM, a choice of Nvidia Quadro (Fermi) graphics, and a number of mechanical and SSD drive options.

While a high-end machine with two Xeon X5680 processors, Quadro 5000 graphics and 12GB RAM will set you back over £6,000, Cryo PC also offers a number of more cost effective options featuring Quad Core (Westmere) Xeon processors. Machines can be configured online here.

Forget chocolate - real eggs decorated by robot is where it’s at this Easter

When I worked as a CAD operator back in the early nineties, we had a pen plotter. I remember being fascinated as it picked up different colour pens and went about its job of draughting complex engineering drawings at speed, line by line.

Well, that’s how I remember it from behind my rose tinted glasses. The reality was crying into the keyboard of my 486 as one of the pens ran out of ink right near the end of an hour-long plot.

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Ever since Intel recalled its 6 Series Express chipsets and Intel Xeon C200 chipsets (because of this issue), we’ve had readers asking us when the replacement mainboards will be available.

UK workstation manufacturer InterPro has just dropped us a line to say that it is now shipping the corrected “B3” Intel parts which have the recall issue(s) fully resolved.

Director, Tom Green said that InterPro’s ‘Sandy Bridge’ line-up will use the latest Intel mainboards with immediate effect and all back orders will now be fulfilled with the revised mainboard models.