The Way Forward to Extreme Scaling in CAE Applications

Over at the Cray Blog, Greg Clifford writes that we are seeing major scaling improvements in CAE codes, across all simulation fields. However, since most CAE simulations currently use less than 250 cores, there is still much work to do in a world where machines with 10,000 cores are commonplace.

Cray’s work with the ISVs has involved profiling applications to enhance scaling throughout the code and for a broad range of simulation features. The joint effort between the system experts and the ISVs is crucial since the ISVs typically do not have the compute resources to test performance on thousands of cores. Also, Cray has been able to work with the ISVs, and leading users, to demonstrate extreme scaling on production models. These runs often require “cpu months” (24 hours/day x30 days = 720 hours) of compute time, but when using thousands of cores per simulation, this can be turned around in less than a day.

Clifford goes on to say that extreme scaling is the only way to achieve today’s performance potential for a broad range of simulation so that CAE will add even more value to the product design process.

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