Altair HyperWorks® Performance with AMD EPYC™ 7002 Series Processors

 

Altair AcuSolve is a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tool commonly used across a very wide range of CFD and multi-physics applications. AcuSolve is a robust solver with proprietary numerical methods that yield stable simulations and accurate results regardless of the quality and topology of mesh elements. It uses a single solver for all flow regimes, with very few parameters to adjust, and it produces rapid results by solving the fully-coupled pressure/velocity equation system using scientifically proven numerical techniques. CFD applications typically scale well across multiple processor cores and servers, have modest memory capacity requirements, and typically perform minimal disk I/O while in the solver section. However, some simulations, such as large transient analysis, may have greater I/O demands. Figure 1 shows the measured performance of three standard AcuSolve benchmarks using on a single server. The performance for each benchmark is measured using the solver elapsed time.

 

Figure 1 AcuSolve Single Server Performance

 

The results in Figure 1 are plotted relative to the performance of a single server configured with AMD EPYC 7451 processors. Larger values indicate better overall performance. These results show the performance advantage available with 7002 series AMD EPYC processors. The 32-core AMD EPYC 7502 processor provides very good performance for these benchmarks. The 64-core AMD EPYC 7702 provides a significant performance advantage over the 32-core processors, particularly for smaller ‘riser’ benchmark, which benefits from the larger cache in the 7702 processor.

Altair Radioss Performance

Altair Radioss is a leading structural analysis solver for highly non-linear problems under dynamic loadings.  It is used across all industries worldwide to improve the crashworthiness, safety, and manufacturability of structural designs. Radioss is similar to AcuSolve in that it typically scales well across multiple processor cores and servers, has modest memory capacity requirements, and performs minimal disk I/O while in the solver section. It is tightly integrated with OptiStruct and it comes with a comprehensive material and rupture library. 

 

Figure 2 Altair Radioss Single Server Performance

Figure 2 presents the results for two standard Radioss benchmark cases plotted relative to the performance of a single server configured with AMD EPYC 7451 processors, where performance is measured in terms of the total elapsed time for each job. Larger values indicate better overall performance. These results show the performance advantage available with 7002 series AMD EPYC processors. The 32-core AMD EPYC 7502 processor provides a good performance for these benchmarks. The 64-core AMD EPYC 7702 provides a significant performance advantage over the 32-core processors for these benchmark cases.

 

 

Conclusion

 

The results presented in this blog show that 7002 series AMD EPYC processors offer a significant performance improvement for Altair AcuSolve and Radioss relative to 7001 series AMD EPYC processors.