Nano-Hive brings the power and speed of distributed computing to Nanorex

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich., Aug. 30, 2006 — Nanorex today announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Nano-Hive LLC, a pioneer and leading developer of distributed molecular simulation software. The acquisition integrates two powerful open source software solutions under the same roof. NanoEngineer-1, developed by Nanorex, is the first computer-aided design (CAD) program for the nanotech age, featuring a 3-D molecular modeling environment with an integrated molecular dynamics engine for simulating the movement and operation of mechanical nanosystems. NanoHive-1 is an advanced nanosystem simulation platform with the ability to integrate several molecular physics plugins and distribute calculations over a network to many computers. Nano-Hive is renamed to NanoHive-1 for consistency with the rest of the Nanorex product line.

“With NanoHive-1’s molecular physics plugin architecture and distributed computing power, NanoEngineer-1 users will have even more speed and options at their disposal,” said Mark Sims, Nanorex’s president. “NanoHive-1 will give our users better-quality simulations faster.”

Brian Helfrich, Nano-Hive founder and architect of NanoHive-1, joins the Nanorex team where he continues as the lead architect for NanoHive-1. “The integration of NanoHive-1 and NanoEngineer-1 will provide a powerful computational toolset for nanotech researchers and students,” Helfrich said. “While NanoEngineer-1 already has an excellent molecular dynamics simulator, NanoHive-1 enhances it by giving users more options. Now users can run their simulations on a wide variety of computer architectures and handle jobs that would otherwise take too long to complete.”

About Nanorex
Nanorex Inc., based in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., is a developer of computational modeling tools made specifically for the design and analysis of productive nanosystems. Nanorex's first product, NanoEngineer-1, is a 3-D molecular engineering program. It includes both a sophisticated CAD module for the design and modeling of atomically precise components and assemblies, and a molecular dynamics module for simulating the movement and operation of mechanical nanodevices. NanoEngineer-1 is currently under development and is scheduled for release in spring 2007. For more information about Nanorex, visit http://www.nanorex.com/

• NanoHive-1 version 1.2.0 Beta 1 for Unix derivatives is available for download.
• We'd also like to introduce NanoHive@Home which is slated for Q2 2006.

• NanoHive-1 version 1.2.0 Beta 1 for win32-x86 platforms is available for download. *nix distros will be made available in the coming weeks.
• The main feature of this beta release is that Nano-Hive is now fully distributable across computing networks (DC). Note that this release is not the @home-style DC client - that client, based on the BOINC platform, will be made available early 2006 - this release is mainly for dedicated DC networks. Other features of this release include:
  • New plugins.
    • SocketsPIC_Control - This Distributed PIC Control plugin controls slave NanoHive-1 instances via sockets, and transfers work units to/from them via FTP, or NFS.
    • AIREBO - This Physical Interaction plugin employs the Adaptive Intermolecular Reactive Empirical Bond Order (AIREBO) potential is an extension of the REBO potential (used by the REBO_MBM plugin) that adds non-bonded intermolecular interactions, and four-body torsional interaction.
    • nanorexMMP_ImportExport - This Data Import/Export plugin handles nanoENGINEER-1's MMP file format. Along with this, the mmpShaft atom set type was introduced, allowing nE-1 users to easily specify atom sets for use with Nano-Hive.
  • Added linear force and rotary force activators to the pathing system. These new activators provide a more realistic way to activate molecular machines than the original constant velocity pathing mechanism (which still has great value and still exists.)
  • Added the BoxedSet simulation specification atom set descriptor for use in pathing atoms and molecules. With this descriptor, the user can simply specify two opposite points of a box and all the atoms inside become an atom set.
  • Switched threading, sockets, and mutexes from the Common C++ library to the Netscape Portable Runtime (NSPR) library, and added a homegrown StringTokenizer class.
  • Alpha 4 of the HiveKeeper Graphical User Interface for NanoHive-1 is included with this release. The new capabilities of this alpha version include:
    • Support for multiple local and remote NanoHive-1 (NH1) instances
    • A simulation summary tab for each NH1 instance
    • A Physical Interaction Calculator (PIC), ie, NH1 slave instances summary tab for each DC network
    • A visualization recenter macro, vdW representation, and variable playback speed for the simulation visualization frame