Phast 8.23, Safeti 8.23

Phast is a comprehensive process hazard analysis software tool for all stages of design and operation. Safeti is the user-friendly industry standard software tool for carrying out quantitative risk analysis of onshore process, chemical and petrochemical facilities or analysis of chemical transport risk. Find out more.

At DNV GL we are working on the next major release of Phast and Safeti, version 8.4.  It’s a very busy and exciting time for us all and I can’t wait for the software to be released.  I’ll describe some of the improvements in this post.

64-bit software

The most significant improvement and undertaking is making the software a 64-bit release.

Without getting too technical, with Phast/Safeti built in 32-bit architecture, your processor (even if its a 64-bit processor) will only be able to access 4 GB of RAM per process.  By making the software a 64-bit product, many of the bottlenecks associated with 32-bit will be removed, providing significant benefits, particularly for large studies.

We are a long way through this process and have been running a number of tests to check how the software handles large studies.  I’m very encouraged by what I have seen so far.  We have been running studies that in 32-bit were either very difficult to run or impossible to run without splitting the study into multiple files.  So far, every study has run in 64-bit without any memory-related issues.

There are other benefits to making the switch to 64-bit, such as calculations performing quicker, although this is not the key driver.  The key driver is the memory handling.  I’m very excited by the potential that 64-bit software offers.

If you are about to purchase new hardware for running Phast/Safeti studies, it is worth having a conversation with DNV GL so that we can provide you with some guidance.  Multi-core processors, RAM and solid state drives are key hardware components that require some consideration for running very large studies, in particular.  Please contact us at software.support@dnvgl.com for more information.