Workstation for HPC CFD

tubois · November 2, 2015, 09:29

Dear all,

Our company would buy a workstation for me to run some CFD simulation. I used to run my CFD HPC Simulation on the super-cluster in some national HPC centers. I used the open source code SALOME, CODE_SATURNE, maybe in the coming years, OpenFOAM. The commercial codes, we only have Autodesk CFD and maybe move to another cheaper one.

For running a mesh 8 millions cells 30 000 steps in CODE_SATURNE for an atomspheric application, I use 16x24 = 384 procs on the super-cluster for about 24h. Today, we need to run some fluid, heat transfer, maybe two-phase, turbomachinary simulations. I do not know what kind of workstation should we buy. Since I use open source codes, so the license problem seems not that important. Can someone suggest a machine (HP preferred or Dell, company policy)? We need a good graphical card for visulization.

HP Z840 station, which one is better? should as many as cores x procs?
double Xeon E5-2697v3 14-core with 64GB DDR4-2133 CPU and 2xNVIDIA Quadro K5200
double Xeon E5-2687Wv3 10-core with 64GB DDR3-2133 and 2xNVIDIA Quadro K6000
or double E5-2660v3 2.6GHz 10-core with 64GB DDR4 and some other NVIDIA card is ok?
or just a double 4-core/8-core is large enough?

The station will be also be served for running some Solid mechanics simulation with autodesk and solidworks. I think it is less ressource demanding than CFD.

The budget is about 5000 euros to 7000 euros.

Thank you for the answers in advance.

tubois · November 3, 2015, 03:39

Here are several propositions. Could somebody give us some comments?

Configuration mini:
2x Intel Xeon E5-2667v3 3.2GHz 8-core (16 cores totales)
64GB DDR4-2133
1xNVIDIA Quadro K4200
SSD 512G + 1 T HDD (7200) + 3T storage

Configuration medium:
2x Intel Xeon E5-2687v3 3.1GHz 10-core (20 cores totales)
2x Intel Xeon E5-2697v3 2.6GHz 14-core (28 cores totales)
96GB DDR4-2133
2x NVIDIA Quadro K5200
SSD 512G + 3 T HDD (7200) + 2x3T storage

Configuration maxi:
2x Intel Xeon E5-2699v3 2.3GHz 18-core (36 cores totales)
128GB-256GB DDR4-2133
2x NVIDIA Quadro K6000
SSD 512G + 2x3 T HDD (7200) + 4x3T storage

Quote:

Originally Posted by tubois

Dear all,

Our company would buy a workstation for me to run some CFD simulation. I used to run my CFD HPC Simulation on the super-cluster in some national HPC centers. I used the open source code SALOME, CODE_SATURNE, maybe in the coming years, OpenFOAM. The commercial codes, we only have Autodesk CFD and maybe move to another cheaper one.

For running a mesh 8 millions cells 30 000 steps in CODE_SATURNE for an atomspheric application, I use 16x24 = 384 procs on the super-cluster for about 24h. Today, we need to run some fluid, heat transfer, maybe two-phase, turbomachinary simulations. I do not know what kind of workstation should we buy. Since I use open source codes, so the license problem seems not that important. Can someone suggest a machine (HP preferred or Dell, company policy)? We need a good graphical card for visulization.

HP Z840 station, which one is better? should as many as cores x procs?
double Xeon E5-2697v3 14-core with 64GB DDR4-2133 CPU and 2xNVIDIA Quadro K5200
double Xeon E5-2687Wv3 10-core with 64GB DDR3-2133 and 2xNVIDIA Quadro K6000
or double E5-2660v3 2.6GHz 10-core with 64GB DDR4 and some other NVIDIA card is ok?
or just a double 4-core/8-core is large enough?

The station will be also be served for running some Solid mechanics simulation with autodesk and solidworks. I think it is less ressource demanding than CFD.

The budget is about 5000 euros to 7000 euros.

Thank you for the answers in advance.

flotus1 · November 3, 2015, 06:08

With your budget of 5000-7000€ in mind, there seems to be only one option for you.
A single Quadro 6000 (which is obsolete by now) will cost you around 5000€, not to mention the extremely expensive 18-core Xeon processors.

Just make sure nobody is selling you outdated Hardware they are trying to get rid of. Nvidia has just released its Maxwell generation of graphics cards. An M4000 will get you better performance than a K4200 and TWICE the video memory for just a slightly higher price.

tubois · November 3, 2015, 08:51

Thank you very much for your reply. In fact, for instance, we are just looking for some powerful configuration without considering the prices and asking for the prices after our supplier.

The first option with only 16 cores seems quite limited for HPC.

I am wondering the second and third options are good choices to do CFD with OpenFOAM for example. And Which one is better?

At last, does it exists a 64-core mini-cluster which can be installed like a workstation without air conditioning? No space for a server in our local.

Quote:

Originally Posted by flotus1

With your budget of 5000-7000€ in mind, there seems to be only one option for you.
A single Quadro 6000 (which is obsolete by now) will cost you around 5000€, not to mention the extremely expensive 18-core Xeon processors.

Just make sure nobody is selling you outdated Hardware they are trying to get rid of. Nvidia has just released its Maxwell generation of graphics cards. An M4000 will get you better performance than a K4200 and TWICE the video memory for just a slightly higher price.

flotus1 · November 3, 2015, 10:06

Quote:

we are just looking for some powerful configuration without considering the prices and asking for the prices after our supplier

Then you are in for a nasty surprise. Buying option 3 from HP or Dell should be somewhere around 30000-40000€. Not worth the money for HPC.

While the first option might seem limited for HPC because of the relatively low core count, it is actually quite a decent setup. It offers a high memory bandwidth per core, the cpu frequency is pretty high and the CPUs have a fair amount of cache per core.
Especially the 18-core Xeon processors are not the best choice for HPC because of the low cpu frequencies.

I haven't come across any vendor that sells 4-socket 2011-3 systems in a workstation form factor. It should be possible though. But with a price-to-performance ratio in mind you would be better off buying 2-4 of cheaper systems like option 1 and connect them to a compute cluster through Infiniband or even 10 gigabit-ethernet.

RobertB · November 13, 2015, 14:36

You can get

https://www.pugetsystems.com/nav/pea.../customize.php

as a quad core - they are xeon v2s, The V3s have come out.

The advantages it would have is that admin would be easier as a single machine and you don't need a separate pre/post node (or for one of the nodes to be a head node with more memory).

Once you get to larger clusters it is probably more economical and efficeint to go with the dual processor systems).

November 2, 2015, 09:29	Workstation for HPC CFD	#1
tubois New Member Zhenlan GAO Join Date: Oct 2015 Location: France Posts: 17 Rep Power: 10	Dear all, Our company would buy a workstation for me to run some CFD simulation. I used to run my CFD HPC Simulation on the super-cluster in some national HPC centers. I used the open source code SALOME, CODE_SATURNE, maybe in the coming years, OpenFOAM. The commercial codes, we only have Autodesk CFD and maybe move to another cheaper one. For running a mesh 8 millions cells 30 000 steps in CODE_SATURNE for an atomspheric application, I use 16x24 = 384 procs on the super-cluster for about 24h. Today, we need to run some fluid, heat transfer, maybe two-phase, turbomachinary simulations. I do not know what kind of workstation should we buy. Since I use open source codes, so the license problem seems not that important. Can someone suggest a machine (HP preferred or Dell, company policy)? We need a good graphical card for visulization. HP Z840 station, which one is better? should as many as cores x procs? double Xeon E5-2697v3 14-core with 64GB DDR4-2133 CPU and 2xNVIDIA Quadro K5200 double Xeon E5-2687Wv3 10-core with 64GB DDR3-2133 and 2xNVIDIA Quadro K6000 or double E5-2660v3 2.6GHz 10-core with 64GB DDR4 and some other NVIDIA card is ok? or just a double 4-core/8-core is large enough? The station will be also be served for running some Solid mechanics simulation with autodesk and solidworks. I think it is less ressource demanding than CFD. The budget is about 5000 euros to 7000 euros. Thank you for the answers in advance.

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November 3, 2015, 06:08		#3
flotus1 Super Moderator Alex Join Date: Jun 2012 Location: Germany Posts: 3,399 Rep Power: 46	With your budget of 5000-7000€ in mind, there seems to be only one option for you. A single Quadro 6000 (which is obsolete by now) will cost you around 5000€, not to mention the extremely expensive 18-core Xeon processors. Just make sure nobody is selling you outdated Hardware they are trying to get rid of. Nvidia has just released its Maxwell generation of graphics cards. An M4000 will get you better performance than a K4200 and TWICE the video memory for just a slightly higher price.

November 13, 2015, 14:36		#6
RobertB Senior Member Robert Join Date: Jun 2010 Posts: 117 Rep Power: 16	You can get https://www.pugetsystems.com/nav/pea.../customize.php as a quad core - they are xeon v2s, The V3s have come out. The advantages it would have is that admin would be easier as a single machine and you don't need a separate pre/post node (or for one of the nodes to be a head node with more memory). Once you get to larger clusters it is probably more economical and efficeint to go with the dual processor systems).