GPU Acceleration for
ANSYS Mechanical
Peter Tiefenthaler
CADFEM GmbH
GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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
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GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs)
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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
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
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs)
 “Accelerate” Sparse Direct Solver
 Supported
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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
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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)
GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs)
 “Accelerate” PCG/JCG Iterative Solvers
 Supported
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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
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options
Memory saving option (MSAVE,ON)
GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
Basics of GPU Computing for ANSYS
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GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
Basics of GPU Computing for ANSYS
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GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
Basics of GPU Computing for ANSYS
For 6 GB GDDR Memory app. 10 Mio. DOF Model Size
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GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
How to invoke the GPU for an ANSYS Job?
1. Inside ANSYS Workbench – Solve Process Settings
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GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
How to invoke the GPU for an ANSYS Job?
2. Mechanical APDL – Input Command
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GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
How to invoke the GPU for an ANSYS Job?
2. Mechanical APDL – Launcher and Command Line Argument
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GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
Licensing - HPC Packs
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GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
NVIDIA Maximus Technology
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GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
Recommended System Configurations
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GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
New GPU Kepler Architecture for ANSYS
Tremendous Performance Increase at ANSYS v15 ?
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GPU Acceleration for ANSYS Mechanical
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