The ‘space age' Speedo LZR RACER suit is made from ultra lightweight, low drag, water repellent, fast drying fabric, unique to Speedo, called LZR PULSE. It is the world's first 100 per cent ultrasonically welded racing swimsuit with bonded seams that give the effect of no seams at all - as well as special LZR Panels that compress the swimmer's body into a more streamlined shape. A striking calligraphic design by Comme des Garçons on the front panel of the bodysuit enhances the cutting edge appearance of the suit that Phelps, winner of 8 medals in Athens 2004, has declared makes him “ feel like a rocket” when he hits the water.

NASA Langley Research Centre's eminence in fluid and thermodynamics was integral to the development of the LZR PULSE fabric. Fabrics were subjected to rigorous surface friction tests in one of the world's most accurate wind tunnels, similar to those used in the research and development of spacecraft components.

Speedo also enlisted the expertise of ANSYS, Inc. and its leading CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) software that can simulate and test air and liquid flows, including the drag and flow of water around a “virtual swimmer's” body. The technology is used extensively by aerospace, civil, naval industries and other sports such as F1 motor racing and America 's Cup yacht racing. Chris Reid, vice president of marketing at ANSYS explained, “Computer-aided engineering (CAE) software from ANSYS offers an incredibly accurate and cost-effective way of applying engineering principles to help develop and assess potential sports performance involving fluid flows. Speedo recognises the value this technology can bring by creating leading, innovative products that reinforce its number 1 position and enhance its brand in the market”.

Speedo co-President, David Robinson said, “We place great emphasis on research and development and have made a multi million pound investment in the development of the Speedo LZR RACER. Our focus on performance is as great now as it was when the company began in 1928. Our partnerships, with Comme des Garçons, NASA, Australian Institute of Sport and ANSYS, bring performance and design together to create the best for our consumers. The results speak for themselves when you see that more gold medals and swimming records are achieved with Speedo than any other brand in the world”.

The Speedo LZR RACER suit will debut at national trials in countries around the world from March and looks destined to be a record breaker with indications of more medals being won by swimmers wearing Speedo in 2008 – the company's 80 th anniversary - proof of the company's ongoing commitment and determination to maintain its position as the World No.1 swimwear brand.

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SOUTHPOINTE, Pa., Feb. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ANSYS, Inc. (Nasdaq: ANSS), a global innovator of simulation software and technologies designed to optimize product development processes, today announced the availability of an enhanced high-performance computing (HPC) benchmark suite. Designed to guide customers who are adopting HPC systems for simulation, the improved benchmark suite has been used by ANSYS partners to assess performance of software from ANSYS on the latest HPC systems and technologies. The new benchmark suite provides updated simulation workloads for structural analysis and computational fluid dynamics (CFD), exercising a variety of simulation solution methodologies and addressing bigger simulation tasks, which increasingly have become the norm as engineering organizations tackle more detailed and complex simulations. The resulting performance data assists customers seeking to understand the benefit of HPC for specific simulation tasks and model sizes.

The expanded HPC benchmarking suite includes a set of simulation models that are representative of the breadth and depth of ANSYS software capabilities. Including 15 simulation models in the mechanical modeling area and seven in the fluids modeling area, the suite provides customers with performance metrics for a variety of model sizes and solver methods, while reflecting the trend toward larger models and comprehensive multiphysics simulation.

Performance results for the suite of benchmarks have been generated by AMD, HP, Intel, Mellanox Technologies and other partners, and they are available on the ANSYS Web site at http://www.ansys.com/benchmark. The posted results demonstrate the excellent performance scalability of software from ANSYS on the latest HPC technologies, including new quad-core processors from Intel and AMD, as well as the new ConnectX InfiniBand adapters from Mellanox. The results reflect the ongoing research and development focus by ANSYS and its key partners concerning software performance on HPC systems, which yielded significant improvements to distributed memory parallel solvers and I/O speed in the ANSYS(R) 11.0 and FLUENT(R) 6.3 releases.

"The new benchmark suite is a reflection of our commitment to working with key partners in the HPC industry to optimize and demonstrate performance of our software on the latest computing technologies," said Jim Cashman, president and CEO of ANSYS, Inc. "This focus helps ensure that our customers can adopt new HPC solutions that enhance the overall value of simulation, by enabling faster turnaround time and larger, more detailed simulations. The combination of ANSYS software with HPC leads to a simulation process that can reliably impact engineering decision-making in the time frame our customers need. The new performance results show that HPC is now within the reach of all our customers, whether on the desktop, servers or clusters."

Intel used the new ANSYS benchmark suite to demonstrate the performance of its Intel(R) Xeon(R) Processor 5400 series, released in November 2007. "ANSYS has set a high standard within the computer-aided engineering (CAE) industry for HPC benchmarking and reporting," said Richard Dracott, general manager of Intel's High Performance Computing Organization. "The new benchmark suite provides a reliable and consistent methodology to measure the performance of our latest platforms. Our close collaboration with ANSYS on benchmarking, tuning and optimization enables ANSYS to take full advantage of Intel's latest processor capabilities and to deliver innovative product releases that provide customers with exceptional value."

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SOUTHPOINTE, Pa., March 3, 2008 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- ANSYS, Inc. (Nasdaq:ANSS), a global innovator of simulation software and technologies designed to optimize product development processes, today announced that it has been listed among top performers on the 2007 Shareholder Scoreboard compiled by The Wall Street Journal.

The Scoreboard is the newspaper's annual ranking of 1,000 companies in 75 industries, based on their stock performance over the past year as well as over the past 3-year, 5-year and 10-year periods. ANSYS was ranked #9 on the best performers' 10-year list, with a 36.8 percent average annual return for a decade.

In addition, ANSYS was ranked #1 in the Software Industry Group with a 1-year return of 90.7 percent, as well as #14 on the Scoreboard's Honor Roll, a compilation of companies that earned straight-A ratings, ranked on five-year average compound annual total returns through year-end 2007. These organizations were in the top 20 percent of companies evaluated for the past one, three, five and ten years.

Richard Davis of Needham & Co., who has been covering ANSYS for a decade, remarks, "Baseball great Ernie Banks once said 'Let's play two!' ANSYS investors are looking forward to another decade of growth from the simulation juggernaut. It won't be easy, but we believe simulation software sales could grow five-fold over the next 10 years and we see no reason to believe that ANSYS won't be riding this wave all the way. As broken-hearted Patriots fans know, perfect seasons are difficult to deliver. ANSYS has a 41-quarter winning streak going. This hasn't come easily and all streaks sometimes hit a road bump; we believe ANSYS is well-positioned to put together another very good 10-year record. How do you tack on another decade of impressive growth? A good place to start is to be the world's largest, fastest growing and most profitable simulation software vendor. ANSYS is the Dean Smith of software -- this is a talented, teamwork-focused juggernaut that has literally run circles around its competition. Will the winning streak of good results continue another decade? We think so."

Jim Cashman, president and CEO at ANSYS, Inc. states, "We knew executing our vision would take time, commitment, focus and investment. While this is a long-term journey, we are seeing the benefits today. This recognition is a great testament to the long-term commitment of our employees, and while this honor is based on past performance, we feel our continued expansion of technology, partners and customers provides a solid foundation for future opportunities to excel over the next ten years."

The Wall Street Journal's Shareholder Scoreboard originally was developed 13 years ago to provide investors with a long-term perspective on the creation of value in the stock market.