An evaluation of superminicomputers for thermal analysis

The feasibility and cost effectiveness of solving thermal analysis problems on superminicomputers is demonstrated. Conventional thermal analysis and the changing computer environment, computer hardware and software used, six thermal analysis test problems, performance of superminicomputers (CPU time, accuracy, turnaround, and cost) and comparison with large computers are considered. Although the CPU times for superminicomputers were 15 to 30 times greater than the fastest mainframe computer, the minimum cost to obtain the solutions on superminicomputers was from 11 percent to 59 percent of the cost of mainframe solutions. The turnaround (elapsed) time is highly dependent on the computer load, but for large problems, superminicomputers produced results in less elapsed time than a typically loaded mainframe computer.