Tidbits: ArchiCAD, Vectorworks and Nvidia

ArchiCAD Used to Win Constructech Vision Award

The Constructech Vision Award has been given to ArchiCAD-based Holden Construction for its use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) software in a large construction project. Holden won the award for its Aquarium Hilton Garden Inn in Atlanta, Georgia. The project demonstrated how a general contractor can use BIM technology to enhance teamwork, build faster, avoid costly change order and diminish the number of field conflicts.

Graphisoft, now a subsidiary of German Nemetschek AG, has recently launched ArchiCAD 12 and introduced the world’s first BIM with multiprocessing support. To learn more about ArchiCAD 12 go here.

Executive Suite Makes Some Changes at Nemetschek North America

Nemetschek North America, the makers of VectorWorks, has announced that Dr. Biplab Sarkar will now be its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Dr. Sarkar has been involved with the company for eight years spearheading its advanced 3D modeling technology and came to N.A. from Parametric Technologies.

Eight years ago when Architosh reported this news there was some hope that Dr. Sarkar’s ProE background would foster advanced MCAD on the Mac or perhaps create opportunities for ProE file compatibility between VectorWorks and ProE.

Former CTO Paul Pharr will now become the company’s new Chief Information Officer (CIO) responsible for information management systems and web applications and delivery technologies. These changes are aimed at better positioning the company’s resources.

Nvidia Achieves Top Spot in Distributed Computing Application

Nvidia GPUs are powering over 1 petaflop of processing power to Stanford University’s Folding@Home distributed computing application as of last week, reports the University. Active Nvidia GPUs deliver over 1.25 petaflops or 42% of the total processing power of the application which seeks to understand how proteins affect the human body.

The key to this story however is that Nvidia is achieving this computation contribution via just 11,370 total active processors. In comparison 208,268 CPUs running Windows were active, contributing just 6% of processing power to the project.

Nvidia’s GPUs are delivered in is Nvidia CUDA architecture appliances. “As these statistics show, the impact of NVIDIA GPUs on protein folding simulations has been extraordinary,” said Vijay Pande, associate professor of chemistry, Stanford University and director of the Folding@home project. “Teams that are folding with NVIDIA GPUs are seeing huge boosts to their production and this is helping to accelerate the project significantly.”

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