Benefits

FMS can provide the following benefits to your application program and computing environment:

• Reduced Hardware Cost
  FMS reduces hardware costs in the following ways:
  1. Reduced memory requirements.
     FMS stores your problem data on disk instead of memory. While disk and memory prices continue to decrease, memory has remained 100 times as expensive as disk per unit of storage over the past 30 years. As processors become faster, problem sizes are increasing. Because matrix storage requirements increase as the square of the problem size, the cost of a memory only solution can be prohibitive. FMS overlaps disk transfers with processing in a unique way which allows the solution to be completed as fast as if the entire data were stored only in memory. The amount of memory required by FMS for buffering is usually the minimum which can be configured in the machine.
  2. Processor efficiency.
     FMS operates the processors at the maximum efficiency possible. This means that more work is produced on each machine.
  3. Competitive hardware purchases.
     An optimized version of FMS is avalialbe on all major platforms. By using FMS benchmarks as part of your hardware selection criteria, a competative environment is established where each vendor can demonstrate the full potential of their solution.
  In most cases, the savings on hardware far exceed the cost of the FMS license.

• Reduced Development Time
  FMS is prepackaged software that can easily be incorporated into your application, reducing development time, cost and risk.

• Solves Large Problems
  Machines architectures provide for a limited number of memory chips, which limits the maximum amount of memory which may be installed. This in turn limites the maximum problem size which can be solved using only memory for problem storage. FMS overcomes this limitation by storing the data on disk and transferring it to memory as required. The maximum problem size which may be solved with FMS is limited only by available disk space.

• Portablilty
  An optimized version of FMS is available on all modern platforms. The interface between your application and FMS is platform independent. This allows you to easily migrate your application between platforms.

• Faster Job Completion
  FMS operates each processor at the maximum speed possible. On machines with multiple processors, FMS automatically divides the work among the processors, operating them in parallel to reduce run time.

• Improved Accuracy
  FMS makes high-resolution, nonlinear and three-dimensional analysis feasible by increasing performance and extending maximum problem size.

• Improved System Performance
  FMS eliminates page faults and reduces requirements for page and swap files.