A few miles down the road from the Kennedy Space Center, visitors can witness another technological marvel on Florida's Merritt Island. In this case, credit goes not to NASA, but to Bentley Systems, one of the world's leading software developers in the engineering marketplace. Aided by 11 state-of-the-art 1 GHz AMD Athlon™ processor-based systems, Bentley's Advanced Visualization Services Center (VizCenter) offers a sneak preview into the future of computer aided design (CAD).

For many of the world's architects and engineers, CAD has been, over the last 20 years, a fancy drafting table inside a computer, a software extension of pencil and paper. The drawings produced are the beginning schematics of buildings, roads, foundries and networks.

There is nothing two-dimensional about the VizCenter, Bentley's lab and training facility, where customers learn how to use complex new 3D CAD animation and rendering tools. They have also designed lighting solutions through particle tracing software. This software allows engineers and architects to trace the path of light particles and measure how many particles are absorbed and how many are reflected off different surfaces. These forays into the future utilize Bentley's MicroStation, a suite of software applications that integrates diverse mechanical, engineering and design applications.

"The AMD Athlon™ processor provides MicroStation users with one of the fastest x86 single processor solutions available today," said Jerry Flynn, who runs the VizCenter. "I am amazed at how quickly we can render complex designs now."

The key challenge for MicroStation users is reducing the significant amounts of rendering time necessary to effectively analyze designs. That's where the AMD Athlon™ processors come in.

"For us, the most important thing about a CPU is its floating point performance," said Flynn. "Whenever you do --say a particle trace solution of a 3D model, it's nothing but number crunching. In my experience, the AMD Athlon™ processor makes a jump over the competition at the same clock speed."

Nationwide, Bentley reports that its MicroStation is used by more than 40 of the U.S. state transportation departments. Flynn tells the story of taking his machine to meet with engineers from North Carolina's Dept of Transportation. "I had my 1 GHz AMD Athlon™ processor-based system. These folks had workstations with processors made by one of your competitors. They were rendering the same data set as I was, but not as fast. That's because rendering is so floating point intensive. Engineers are often amazed just how fast it is. And when I'm using a machine to edit thousands of animation frames, as I do on my Pinnacle Systems DV500, the front-side bus provided me with a big performance gain."

The VizCenter was created to showcase MicroStation and other advanced Bentley products at their full potential. That's why AMD is pleased to help facilitate this exciting technology. "We're almost 100% AMD in the VizCenter," said Flynn. " Fifteen of the 18 x86 processors here at the VizCenter are made by AMD. The others are just old. In the future, I see us becoming 100% AMD. I don't need anything else. I'm perfectly content. Any time I'm doing serious MicroStation rendering, I'm using an AMD Athlon™ processor-based system."

Bentley works with some of the largest architectural firms in the world, including NBBJ, Bligh Voller Nield, Foster and Partners and Richard Rogers Partnership. Sometimes these clients come to work with Jerry Flynn at the VizCenter, and other times Jerry goes to see them. "I admit I've become spoiled. I quit carrying my laptop. I carry this 30-pound luggable computer, with my I GHz AMD Athlon™ processor. It won't fit in the airplane overhead, but it's worth the effort."

(Good news, Jerry: Later this year, you'll be able to purchase a mobile one GHz AMD Athlon™ processor-based system. We intend to make your globe-trotting journeys as easy as possible.)

Greater productivity is the key for every modern company. And greater productivity is the result of the marriage of Bentley's MicroStation and AMD Athlon™ processors. "I've been using CAD for over 20 years. Today, it's so much easier for me. I never thought I'd completely do away with pencil and paper, but I have. Now, I do everything on the computer," said Flynn.

"AMD has designed a processor that's more than capable of being used in workstations," said Flynn. "To me, AMD is in the home market with a business CPU. I think that's going to change soon."

(That's already begun to change, Jerry. A number of OEM's are producing AMD Athlon™ processor-based systems for business applications.)

AMD Athlon™ processor-based system configuration: 1GHz AMD Athlon™ processor, dual 9 GB RAID ultra 160 drives, 512MB RAM. Configuration of system used previously at Bentley VizCenter: Digital Personal Workstation 600MHz, 21164 CPU, 512k RAM