COMSOL Multiphysics®

HPC Workstation Benchmarks

The right HPC workstation for your application

Recently much has been written about cloud and cluster computing and its increasing importance for computer aided engineering (CAE). Despite this, the workstation is still the common tool for designers and engineers for their CAD/CAE applications, not least by the large performance now available for each engineer to put under his/her desk. On the other hand these technological advancements gave the IT landscape and CPU market a huge variety and the customer the choice to find the right hardware for his/her application.

With this paper we want to shed some light on that matter to help decide for the right hardware for your simulation tasks.

Multicore and Multithreading

Over the last decades we observed various exponential trends within the information technology. Most popular is Moore’s law stating that the number of transistors on a chip doubles approximately every two years. For the user however - since the need for faster computers is ever increasing - another exponential growth over the last decades is more important: the price-performance ratio, the computations per Euro. A vital part in that growth play multicore processors. Technological limitations (like the stagnation of clock speed) forced the computing world to go parallel. Since 2004 we observed an increase in multicore computers which are nowadays mainstream. Modern multicore processors usually feature up to 14 cores, and co-processors can even have more than 60 cores.

Consequently, every application needs to account for parallelism in order to exploit the capabilities of recent parallel hardware. In order for a single process application to be able to be run in parallel on a multicore machine, it has to be split up into smaller parts and these smaller parts are called threads. The seemingly simultaneous execution of several of those threads is called multithreading, and this has been a built-in function in our desktop computers for the last 15 years or so. Multithreading does not necessarily require multiple cores and can be performed on a single-core machine by quickly switching between the active threads in time-slicing mode. This over-assignment allows for better resource utilization of a single core computer and when multiple cores are available multithreaded software reaches its full potential. Hence a multicore processor is a large step forward in comparison to a single core. Having multiple computational units allow multiple threads to run parallel and a multicore processor can therefore be expected to perform more work per time unit. As a result, parallelization is today the major source for speeding up computations.

Our benchmarks show how COMSOL applications can benefit from a 12-core up to a 24-core machine. Computational times are significantly reduced when using multiple cores. This results in many more simulations in the same amount of time – increasing productivity.

How to find the optimal hardware

The minimum compute time for your COMSOL application is dependent on many factors. What physics you chose to include in your COMSOL application, how you chose to split up your physics before solving, and what solver you chose to use to solve the underlying equation system. These factors all contribute to how much of the computations can be parallelized, and they therefore also have an impact on how COMSOL can take advantage of multicore hardware.

high performance computing

How to find the right HPC Workstationrecommended by comsol and benchmarked for your application

• Benchmarked PRIMEFLEX® for HPC Workstation

• Optimized configuration for your simulation project

• Your COMSOL Multiphysics license arrives preinstalled

Eigenfrequencies of a Living Room

The response of a speaker system in a living room can be evaluated with frequency domain analysis by adding the speaker dia-phragm movement and sweeping over the frequency range. (10MDOF, Iterative Solver, GMRES with SOR, 47GB)

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Benchmarks

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Displacement Ventilation

This Model investigates the performance of a displacement ventilation system. Fluid flow is simulated using the Non-Isothermal Flow interface with k-omega turbulence model. (796kDOF, Iterative Solver, GMRES with SOR, 15GB)

Multiphysics Microphone

Brüel and Kjær 4134 condenser microphone. The computed sensitivity level compares well with measurements performed on an actual microphone. This is truly a multi-physics model coupling thermoacoustics, membrane mechanics, electrostatics and the moving mesh ALE. (815kDOF, Direct Solver, PARDISO, 57GB)

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RF Heating of a Waveguide Bend

Model of an RF waveguide bend with a dielectric block inside. There are electromag-netic losses in the block as well as on the waveguide walls which cause the assembly to heat up over time. Material properties of the block are temperature dependent. (1.3MDOF, Direct Solver, PARDISO, 60GB)

When you do real multiphysics simulations it is impossible to choose one hardware setup that is optimal for all of the near infinite possibilities that you have with COMSOL. Some applications are due to Amdahl’s law less fit for the large amount of cores that are available in the latest Intel® Xeon® Processor generation and benefits more from higher clock frequency, and some applications benefit immensely from the extra cores.

Finding the right workstation for your applications will lead to an optimal use of your hardware resources and time. This decrease in computation time, together with the power of COMSOL Multiphysics, will bring your productivity to new levels.

The optimal performance of numerical simulations on multicore computers, of course, relies on the fact that all cores are in use. By default, the COMSOL software utilizes all available cores on your system, so there is nothing specific to be done in order to squeeze out the best from your system. Optimized solution platform

COMSOL and Fujitsu carry out extensive benchmark studies to design PRIMEFLEX® for HPC configurations. These provide users in research and development the optimal solution for their simulation projects at an excellent value and ready to go. With your COMSOL Multiphysics® license preinstalled your PRIMEFLEX® for HPC workstation arrives ready to use right away. Software COMSOL Multiphysics® is a general-purpose software platform for modeling and simulating physics-based problems using advanced numerical methods. With COMSOL Multiphysics®, you can account for coupled multiphysics phenomena. With more than 30 add-on products to choose from, you can further expand the simulation platform with dedicated physics interfaces and tools:

COMSOL ELECTRICALAC/DC, RF, MEMS, Plasma, Wave Optics, Semiconductors COMSOL MECHANICALHeat Transfer, Structural Mechanics, Nonlinear Structural Materials, Geomechanics, Fatigue, Acoustics and Multibody

COMSOL FLUID FLOWCFD, Mixer, Microfluidics, Subsurface Flow, Pipe Flow and Molecular Flow

COMSOL CHEMICALChemical Reactions Engineering, Batteries & Fuel Cells, Electro-deposition, Corrosion and Electrochemistry

More information on how to model your challenging application you can find on www.comsol.de

© All rights reserved, including intellectual property rights. Prices, delivery, technical changes and errors excepted. Liability or warranty for the completeness, time liness and accuracy of the data and illustrations excluded. All hardware and software names are brand names and/or trademarks of their respective manufacturers. Validity and offer’s type are subject to change. Fujitsu and the Fujitsu logo are registered trademarks of Fujitsu Limited in the United States and other countries. CELSIUS is a registered trademark of Fujitsu Technology Solutions in the United States and other countries. Intel, the Intel logo, the Intel Inside logo and Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.Stock photo © iStock.com/mbbirdy

Hardware configurations

Fujitsu CELSIUS® R940 High End Workstation 2x6 core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2643 v4

Small 64 GB RAM 6.138 €* Medium 128 GB RAM 6.698 €* Large 256 GB RAM 7.888 € *

Fujitsu CELSIUS® R940 High End Workstation 2x18 core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2697 v4

Small 64 GB RAM 9.116 € * Medium 128 GB RAM 9.676 €* Large 256 GB RAM 10.866 €* *Excluding VAT

Contact us

www.comsol.deE-mail: info@comsol.de

comsol multiphysics gmbhRobert-Gernhardt-Platz 1, 37073 Göttingen, GermanyPhone: +49 551 99721-0, Fax: +49 551 99721-29 berlin officeKurfürstenstr. 84, 10787 Berlin, GermanyPhone: +49 30 3640356-0, Fax: +49 30 3640356-29