Suggested Hardware for ANSYS AUTODYN 2

[muddmaster]

Good morning

The company I am with recently purchased ANSYS AUTODYN, an explicit solver. Currently the software is running on a desktop PC, which is sufficient for smaller problems.

Can anyone offer some benchmark data on what hardware / system integration is optimal for the ANSYS and/or AUTODYN software? ANSYS Inc. has told us that SGI is the "way-to-go", but I was wondering how the performance of the Opteron / AMD 64 X2 / Core 2 all stood up against one another - any suggestions?

(It's a given that I need LOTS of RAM and fast I/O, but if there are any suggestions on choice of 64-bit CPU, I would appreciate it.)

Thanks in advance,
Nick

 

[GregLocock]

My 3 year old (spiffy when new) PC running W2k is 1.5 times faster for solving non linear problems (not FEA, but similar) than my shiny new HP Unix box with 2 cpus. Admittedly the solver is single threaded, but even so...

I'd stick with PCs unless you run into memory limitations, which with 64 bits shouldn't be an issue.

Whats size FEA problems are your running? with half a million DOFs, and Optistruct, I find 1.5 Gb of RAM are sufficient to run in core.



Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[muddmaster]

Thanks Greg.
Right now I am using a P4 3.4GHz with 3.25 GB RAM, running Windows XP Pro, and the solution is painfully slow.

In linear static analysis (ANSYS Traditional), I am running problems with approximately 250k nodes. However, when using AUTODYN - an explicit solver - our problem size quickly exceeds 500k nodes, and at the moment I am limited by my memory requirements. To achieve reasonable results requires further refinement of the mesh, which is not possible with this particular hardware.

I found an interesting comparison of the new Intel Core 2 on

http://www.techreport.com

- they compared the Conroe to the Opteron and the AMD X2. In all of those tests the new Intel Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme (or the new Xeon for Workstations) appeared to outperform AMD (with the exception of communication between CPU and memory). However, I was wondering if anyone had used one of these new CPUs with FEA and could justify if the cost was worth the benefit.

Furthermore, I know that ANSYS has a 64-bit version of their code, which works nicely with a 64-bit OS (such as Linux) but I was wondering if anyone else had used ANSYS 64 and could offer their feedback.

(Oh, and I don't know much about thread-level-parallelism, but I know that both apps I'm using - ANSYS and AUTODYN - have distributed solving capability.)

Thanks again Greg for your suggestions.

Nick

 

[Stringmaker]

Nick,
I just recently built a workstation myself with 2 x 285 Opterons and 16 GB of RAM for solving large problems as my needs have exceeded those of XP 32-bit as well. XP Pro is fine for small-mid sized models but I too ran into the same problems which you've encountered. I use mostly Ansys and am starting to do some stuff in LS DYNA as well. Currently running Win x64 as my OS but I intend to switch over to SUSE Linux V10 in the near future. Seems that people running Ansys products on either OS are happy with the performance. I'd say it's a horse a piece.
Before purchasing all of my components I did quite a bit of research knowing that Woodcrest was on the way and I made my decision based on not only memory I/O performance but floating point benchmarks too. While Woodcrest will outperform Opteron in many benchmarks that are based on SSE performance such as video editing and other multimedia applications I believe that FPU and Memory I/O are the most relevant to the needs of our engineering applications. I have not seen any actual benchmarks yet comparing a 2.6 GHz Opteron to the 3.0 GHz Woodcrest in Ansys or DYNA. I would like too though to see if I infact made the right choice.
AMD is about to release Socket F CPU's which are a new generation of Opterons. Not sure what your budget or timeframe is for the system overall. I'm sure the Socket F's will be priced to a premium like everything else new is. If you're building the system yourself and price is an option something that may sway your decision one way or another is not only the price of processors but the accessories also. Memory and motherboards for the Woodcrests is atleast 50% higher than they are for S940 Opterons at the present time. Go dual processors (dual core preferrably), don't skimp on memory, and I'm sure that you'll be happy with your system whatever you end up going with.

Good luck,
-Brian

 

[muddmaster]

Thanks Brian!

Your feedback was very helpful. I would have to agree that most benchmark studies I have seen focus on on multimedia tests - those that the everyday "gamer" might find useful.

I would agree also that memory I/O and FPU are very important calculations, and was just hoping there would be a "cheat-sheet" showing how the two stacked up... But, since everything is still so new, I imagine there are not much benchmarks out there yet.

I had not thought about the pricing of accessories, and you bring up a good point about RAM and MB - thank you. I think at this point we are looking for an intermediate system - a dual core system at least, or possibly a 2 x 2 - and in the future we may expand to a full-scale server with 8+ CPUs, 64 GB RAM etc. Therefore, if you have been happy with your Opteron configuration, then I will keep that in mind. I myself have seen great succes running the AMD 64, and would like to continue to support AMD, as long as their products are comparable...

Thanks again Brian for all of your suggestions... If we end up going with a Woodcrest, I would be eager to get in touch with you later so that we can conduct some simple benchmark studies and compare (ourselves) the differences.

In the meantime, if anyone else on the forum is currently using the Woodcrest, I would appreciate hearing about it.

Thanks to all!
Have a great day.
Nick

 

[Stringmaker]

Sure Nick glad to help. In the future, if my computational needs ever approached that magnitude, I've already been pondering over the idea of a four processor quad core (16 cores total!!!) system as a solver. That's certainly a ways down the road though. I'm still dazzled by the fact that I can utilize 10 times the memory as before and having five times more CPU power than before. AMD should have quad core socket F's out early-mid next year and Intel has been hinting at end of this year to early next.
I see that you're automotive so if you're doing crash/impact analysis stuff I'm sure you could probably benefit from the cost savings and time to market you'd see. The system I currently have solves my most complex PSD and harmonic analysis runs in a matter of a few hours tops...so I'm far from needing something more powerful at this point. As far as your need for 8 CPU's I doubt that you'd need more than four if you chose to go with quad core Opterons. Most 8 cpu DYNA boxes are using Intel Xeons as a processor which scale horribly from 4 CPU's and above when compared to Opterons. That is...assuming AMD's scalability remains excellent as it has been to date.
Like you I'm a bit partial to AMD myself. Intel's new releases seem to have shifted the spotlight recently. However, I think in the long run I'm a bigger fan of AMD's architecture and product plans. If you do go with an S940 system and would like some hardware recommendations let me know I'll post my setup for you.

-Brian

 

[muddmaster]

Great - I appreciate the info re: Xeon Scalability - I had heard similar stories elsewhere.

I'd really like a quad core too, but I suppose we'll have to wait a few months at least...

As you would suspect, I am currently investigating all possibilities, so if you would be willing to post your system configuration I would certainly appreciate it.

Thanks again for your help.

Nick

 

[Stringmaker]

Nick, here's what my box has in it:

Motherboard: Supermicro H8DCE
Processors: 2 x Opteron 285's
RAM: 8 x 2 GB Patriot ECC Reg DDR400
HD's: 4 x WD Caviar RE2 160 GB
HD's: 4 x WD Caviar RE2 500 GB
Video: NVidia Quadro FX4400
Case: Supermicro SC743-645
CD/DVD: 2 x NEC 3550's
Floppy: Samsung 1.44"

Coming Soon
HD Controller: Areca 1220

I have everything but the hard drive controller in as of now. Whenever funds permit I'm going to grab one of those as well. Currently running Win XP64 and startup was relatively painless for a workstation build. Just do your homework ahead of time, check compatability, and hope nothing comes DOA and you should be up and running in a couple hours.

Good luck,
-Brian

 

[muddmaster]

Thanks Brian!

I will keep your configuration in mind - it looks great.

Nick

 

[crisb]

Stringmaker.......may we ask for a price tag?

 

[Stringmaker]

Crisb,
I have just about $7,000 into the system when it's all said and done. Some of the components, such as the Opterons and Quadro I picked up second hand from people I knew were reputable sellers with next to new items. I saved a good bit of $$ by going this route. Just for kicks I priced what would be an equivalent system from Dell and came up with around $12K.