GPU Acceleration for
ANSYS Mechanical
Peter Tiefenthaler
CADFEM GmbH
GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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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
GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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
GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
“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)
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs)
GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
“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)
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs)
GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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Basics of GPU Computing for ANSYS
GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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Basics of GPU Computing for ANSYS
GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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Basics of GPU Computing for ANSYS
For 6 GB GDDR Memory app. 10 Mio. DOF Model Size
GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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How to invoke the GPU for an ANSYS Job?
1. Inside ANSYS Workbench – Solve Process Settings
GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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How to invoke the GPU for an ANSYS Job?
2. Mechanical APDL – Input Command
GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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How to invoke the GPU for an ANSYS Job?
2. Mechanical APDL – Launcher and Command Line Argument
GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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Licensing - HPC Packs
GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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NVIDIA Maximus Technology
GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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Recommended System Configurations
GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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New GPU Kepler Architecture for ANSYS
Tremendous Performance Increase at ANSYS v15 ?
GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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