[cycleback]

I am looking to purchase a system to expand the number of cores that I can use for simulations in a single machine. The software used is a mix of commercial and homebrewed software.

COMSOL - Multiphysics simulations (electromagnetic, mechanical, and in the future CFD) - Small models ~50K to 100K DOF but 1000s of time steps. Probably mostly single threaded with some incremental improvement with additional cores. I am trying to figure out how to parallelize this efficiently. I believe that COMSOL uses the MKL.

ANSYS - Maxwell (FEA), Mechanical (FEA), Fluent CFD - One or Two HPC packs pretty much always available, sometimes I can access more - Larger models ~100K to ~500K DOF - Some simulations maybe run in parallel. From what I have read ANSYS Mechanical tends to run better on Intel machines, maybe they compile it with MKL.

Custom electromagnetic and thermal code - Lots of small evolutionary design simulations running in parallel with multiple FEA code instances controlled through a single MATLAB instance - Small models ~30K to ~50K DOF with approximately 48 time steps per model - Typical number of designs examined using FEA ~10,000. Mostly parallel though it is unclear to how many cores it can be parallelized without choking due to memory bandwidth limits or the central control code hanging in MATLAB.

Because of the potential use of MKL in the commercial software I have been leaning towards an Intel solution even with the cost and memory bandwidth advantages of Eypc parts.

Do the following parts look okay for the usage I have outlined above?

• CPU: 2 x Intel Xeon Gold 6226R Processor (Model#: CD8069504449000)
• RAM: 12 x Micron 16GB, RDIMM-2933, Timings 21-21-21, 2 Rank x 8 (Model#: MTA18ASF2G72PDZ-2G9J3)
• CPU Coolers: 2 x Noctua NH-U12S DX-3647
• Motherboard: Supermicro X11DAi-N
• (https://www.supermicro.com/en/produc...board/X11DAi-N)
• Tower: Supermicro SYS-7039A-I
• Power supply: 1200W platinum power supply included as part of the Supermicro SYS-7039A-I (https://www.supermicro.com/products/...YS-7039A-i.cfm)
• Hard drive: Samsung 970 EVO 1 TB (Model# MZ-V7E1T0BW)
• Graphics Card: Nvidia Quadro P1000 4GB (Model# VCQP1000V2-PB)

I would like to keep the budget less than $6,000.

Any suggested tweaks or changes to this configuration? I am also considering intel Xeon W-3235 or W-3225.

Is it worth it to get faster memory for this machine? Does the Xeon Gold 6226R or Supermicro XXXX motherboard even support faster memory such as 3200 Mhz RDIMMS?

[danbence]

The following web page has a graph comparing the COMSOL speed on a few different xeons


https://www.microway.com/preconfigur...-multiphysics/

[cycleback]

Originally Posted by danbence

The following web page has a graph comparing the COMSOL speed on a few different xeons
https://www.microway.com/preconfigur...-multiphysics/

Thanks for the link. I haven't seen it before. Any similar comparison that you have seen for ANSYS Mechanical or Maxwell?

[danbence]

Ansys have published some info that includes mechanical and maxwell.



http://www.ozeninc.com/wp-content/up...entation-1.pdf


My experience of maxwell is that runtimes never stopped me working. But if there is a chance you will need 3D simulation, then get as much memory as you can afford. The memory requirement can jump alarmingly as your design progresses.

[cycleback]

Originally Posted by danbence

Ansys have published some info that includes mechanical and maxwell.

http://www.ozeninc.com/wp-content/up...entation-1.pdf

My experience of maxwell is that runtimes never stopped me working. But if there is a chance you will need 3D simulation, then get as much memory as you can afford. The memory requirement can jump alarmingly as your design progresses.

Thanks, do you have experience with running lots of small ANSYS Maxwell or Mechanical models in parallel on any of the Xeon Scalable Cascade Lake CPUs?