Linux Networx will tune the system to drive the performance of structures, fluid dynamics and other aerodynamics and shock physics applications, the companies said.

ATK selected a 110-node LNXI Custom Supersystem powered by AMD Opteron dual processors, integrated visualization and a performance-tuned storage system. The Supersystem also features a Linux Networx visualization subsystem to display large-scale analysis models. The integrated storage subsystem features 6TB of performance capacity and a tuned Linux Networx GPFS (General Parallel File System) high performance cluster file system.

The system will primarily be used to perform aerodynamics simulations and structural integrity evaluations on launch systems and solid propulsion rockets, according to the companies.

"We selected a Custom Supersystem from Linux Networx because of the company's extensive experience with our key applications and the system's resulting price/performance value," Ramesh Krishnan, senior staff engineer at ATK, said in the statement. "The demand for high-fidelity models has increased in recent years, along with the need to solve coupled physics problems and modeling of sophisticated material behavior. We believe that Linux Networx has the proven expertise in application tuning and system design we need to meet these sophisticated computational and visualization demands."