FIDO - Framework for Interdisciplinary Design Optimization

Many design problems require inputs from a number of specialty disciplines. (For airplanes, these include aerodynamics, structures, controls, etc.) The point of view, design emphasis, and design approach of each discipline specialist can be quite different. Designers frequently pass a new design from one discipline to another manually as each designer tries to reach an optimum with little direct interaction with the others. The FIDO system facilitates communications and provides for automatic interactions among the tasks in a multicomponent computational problem, such as a multidisciplinary design process, on a distributed heterogeneous computing system.

All computers involved are networked together, have access to centralized data, and work on their parts of the design simultaneously in parallel whenever possible. Each computational task is done by the computer type most appropriate for it. Provision is made for viewing results as they are produced and for steering the design process. The software is written in modular form to ease migration to upgraded or completely new problems; different codes can be substituted for each of the current code modules with little or no effect on the others.

The potential for commercial use of FIDO rests in its capability to automatically coordinate diverse computations on a networked system of workstations and computers. For example, FIDO could provide the coordination required for the design of fixed- or rotary-wing aircraft, automobiles, ships, spacecraft, computer systems, or electronics.

This document came from: http://hpccp-www.larc.nasa.gov/~fido/fido.html