Download - GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical Peter Tiefenthaler · GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical “Accelerate” Sparse Direct Solver Supported options Static, full transient, full

GPU Acceleration for

ANSYS Mechanical

Peter Tiefenthaler

CADFEM GmbH

GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical

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GPU Acceleration – Important Details

GPU acceleration (-acc)

- First available at ANSYS v13.0 SMP

- NVIDIA Tesla C20xx (Fermi) GPUs supported

- At v14.0 available for DMP – 1 GPU per Job

- ANSYS v14.5 supports multiple GPUs

- ANSYS v14.5 supports Kepler Kxx Series (CUDA 4). Only 10-15% Performance growth

- ANSYS v15.0 will support Kepler Kxx Series (CUDA 5). Higher Performanc expected

- Can be used on Single Machines or Clusters

- Maximum 2 GPUs on Workstations

- Maximum 4 GPUs on Compute Nodes

- Needs HPC Pack !

- Both v14.0 and v14.5 work with CUDA 4 Libraries

- Kepler Series (released end 2012) needs CUDA 5 Libraries -> Supported at v15.0


Widely used for gaming, graphics rendering

First available at v13.0 as general-purpose “accelerator” (SMP only)

Support for double precision arithmetic

Performance exceeding the latest multicore CPUs

Graphics Processing Units (GPUs)

Multi-core processors

•Typically 4-8 cores

•Powerful, general purpose

Many-core processors

•Typically hundreds of cores

•Great for highly parallel code

•Require specialized coding

•Poor performance for sequential code


“Accelerate” Sparse Direct Solver

Supported options Static, full transient, full harmonic, spectrum analyses

Symmetric, non-symmetric matrices (e.g., frictional contact & NROPT,UNSYM)

Real-value, complex-value matrices (e.g., full harmonic analyses with damping)

Positive definite, indefinite matrices (e.g., nonlinear analyses)

Modal, buckling analyses through the use of the Block Lanczos eigensolver

Distributed ANSYS at v 14.0

Unsupported options Partial pivoting (e.g., SOLID elements with mixed u-P formulation or contact elements

with pure Lagrange formulation)

Substructuring analyses (generation and expansion pass)



“Accelerate” PCG/JCG Iterative Solvers

Supported options Static, full transient analyses

Symmetric, real-value, positive definite matrices

Any Lev_Diff value on the PCGOPTION command

Modal analyses through the use of the PCG Lanczos eigensolver

Distributed ANSYS at v 14.0

Unsupported options Memory saving option (MSAVE,ON)



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Basics of GPU Computing for ANSYS


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For 6 GB GDDR Memory app. 10 Mio. DOF Model Size


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How to invoke the GPU for an ANSYS Job?

1. Inside ANSYS Workbench – Solve Process Settings


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2. Mechanical APDL – Input Command


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2. Mechanical APDL – Launcher and Command Line Argument


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Licensing - HPC Packs


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NVIDIA Maximus Technology


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Recommended System Configurations


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New GPU Kepler Architecture for ANSYS

Tremendous Performance Increase at ANSYS v15 ?


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