Fluent 14.5 parallel performance
 

Dear all,

I just got the 8-core HPC pack for my fluent license. Of course I started some benchmarks and now I am a bit disappointed.

I am using a i7-3770 CPU with 16GB RAM and Windows 7, 64bit.

First Case:
1mio cells, eulerian multi-phase flow, pseudo-transient coupled solver
This is what I get, everything is compared to the single-core solution:
2 cores: speed-up of 1.56
4 cores: speed-up of 1.91
6 cores: speed-up of 2.17
8 cores: speed-up of 1.76 (<- this is ok, since no core was left for windows...)

Ok, 2-4cores improves slightly but then it keeps that level. Is this because my processor only has 4 physical cores?

Second Case:
1mio cells, single phase, steady state, SIMPLE
2 cores: speed-up of 1.77
6 cores: speed-up of 2.41

Again, no real speedup, except for the 2 core compared to 1 core...

Third Case:
3.6mio cells, single phase, SAS-transient, SIMPLE
2 cores: speed-up of 1.73
3 cores: speed-up of 2.18
4 cores: speed-up of 2.49
5 cores: speed-up of 2.11
6 cores: speed-up of 2.30
7 cores: speed-up of 2.45

Speed-up stops at 4 cores...


In each case, I am satisfied with the "2 core speed-up". But then, it doesn't improve very much. Are the cases too small, so 2 cores are already "saturated"? Are any additional settings needed to get better performance?

I appreciate any help!!!
Philipp.