About GPGPU Acceleration Requirements for Fluid Simulations

If you have a suitable graphics card, you can use its general-purpose graphics processing unit (GPGPU) to run a fluid simulation.

Running a simulation job using GPGPU acceleration can save time when you have a relatively high-end graphics card. However, GPU acceleration has the following requirements and limitations for fluid simulations:

  • NVIDIA graphics cards with a compute capability of 4 or higher are required.
  • You can run the simulation using multiple GPU cores and specify a different number of cores for each flow analysis case in the simulation. The number of CPU cores you specify must be a multiple of the number of GPU cores.
  • Enable the graphics processor for computing in the execution preferences. For more information, see Common Submission.
  • Specify the coupled solver in the fluid physics. If you run a simulation with the segregated solver selected, the app runs the job using regular execution.
  • In the equation solver settings for steady-state flow steps and transient flow steps, two linear solver options are supported for the coupled solver: AMG-BICGStab and ILU-FMGRES. AMG-BICGStab provides better performance when you run simulations with GPU acceleration.
  • When you run the simulation job, use embedded licensing and run the job locally. For more information, see Running a Simulation from an App.
  • When you select the GPGPU solver, the app disables the error estimator approach for stopping criteria and uses only the traditional residual-based criteria.
  • The problem size that the GPU can solve depends on the memory capacity of the GPU card.