Incremental performance gains for engineering simulations can improve productivity and shrink product development timelines and time to market. Doubling performance can transform entire workflows, allowing design teams to run more and larger simulations in less time to improve innovation, quality, safety, reliability, manufacturability, and time to market.

ANSYS and Intel worked closely together to deliver up to 2.2x higher performance, for ANSYS Mechanical by optimizing the application code for the multi-core Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 v2 and v3 families and the many-core Intel® Xeon Phi™ coprocessor. The combination offers tremendous new performance potential for structural mechanics simulations, at relatively low cost and without altering the end-user experience or complicating the IT environment.

A Smarter, Faster Pathway to High Quality DesignsANSYS Mechanical software is a comprehensive Finite Element Analysis (FEA) tool for structural analysis, including linear, nonlinear, and dynamic studies. Design and analysis teams can take advantage of user-friendly tools and an extensive assortment of element libraries and structural simulation options to explore a wide range of mechanical design problems.

ANYS Mechanical also offers thermal analytics and coupled-physics capabilities for acoustic, piezoelectric, thermal-structural, and thermoelectric analysis. The quality and flexibility of the simulation environment makes it possible to predict product behavior and reliability across a wide range of complex, real-world scenarios.

Dramatic Performance Gains with Intel Xeon Phi CoprocessorsThe Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v3 family provides core-optimized processors with up to 18 cores at 2.3 GHz per processor socket to speed performance for highly parallel applications and up to 3.5 GHz frequency-optimized processors with lower core counts. An Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor delivers extremely high levels of parallelism with up to 61 cores and 244 threads.

Combine ANSYS Mechanical with the Intel® Xeon Phi™ coprocessor for dramatic performance gains in both Windows* and Linux* environments.

More than Double the Performance1,2 for Structural Mechanics Simulations

SOLUTION BRIEF Intel® Xeon Phi™ Coprocessor

“ Intel’s latest addition to

supporting highly-parallel

workloads is impressive,

posting over 1 teraflops

peak performance, which

can be utilized by our

ANSYS direct sparse solver.”

— Barbara Hutchings, Director, Strategic Alliances and HPC strategy,

ANSYS, Inc.

www.colfax-intl.com

Optimization Notice Intel’s compilers may or may not optimize to the same degree for non-Intel microprocessors for optimizations that are not unique to Intel microprocessors. These optimizations include SSE2, SSE3, and SSSE3 instruction sets and other optimizations. Intel does not guarantee the availability, functionality, or effectiveness of any optimization on microprocessors not manufactured by Intel. Microprocessor-dependentoptimizationsinthisproductareintendedforusewithIntelmicroprocessors.CertainoptimizationsnotspecifictoIntelmicroarchitecturearereservedforIntelmicroprocessors. PleaserefertotheapplicableproductUserandReferenceGuidesformoreinformationregardingthespecificinstructionsetscoveredbythisnotice.Noticerevision#20110804INFORMATIONINTHISDOCUMENTISPROVIDEDINCONNECTIONWITHINTEL®PRODUCTS.NOLICENSE,EXPRESSORIMPLIED,BYESTOPPELOROTHERWISE,TOANYINTELLECTUAL PROPERTYRIGHTSISGRANTEDBYTHISDOCUMENT.EXCEPTASPROVIDEDININTEL’STERMSANDCONDITIONSOFSALEFORSUCHPRODUCTS,INTELASSUMESNOLIABILITYWHATSOEVER, ANDINTELDISCLAIMSANYEXPRESSORIMPLIEDWARRANTY,RELATINGTOSALEAND/ORUSEOFINTELPRODUCTSINCLUDINGLIABILITYORWARRANTIESRELATINGTOFITNESSFORAPARTICULARPURPOSE,MERCHANTABILITY,ORINFRINGEMENTOFANYPATENT,COPYRIGHTOROTHERINTELLECTUALPROPERTYRIGHT.UNLESSOTHERWISEAGREEDINWRITINGBYINTEL,THEINTELPRODUCTSARENOTDESIGNEDNORINTENDEDFORANYAPPLICATIONINWHICHTHEFAILUREOFTHEINTELPRODUCTCOULDCREATEASITUATIONWHEREPERSONALINJURYORDEATHMAYOCCUR.Intelmaymakechangestospecificationsandproductdescriptionsatanytime,withoutnotice.Designersmustnotrelyontheabsenceorcharacteristicsofanyfeaturesorinstructionsmarked“reserved”or“undefined.”Intelreservestheseforfuturedefinitionandshallhavenoresponsibilitywhatsoeverforconflictsorincompatibilitiesarisingfromfuturechangestothem.Theinformationhereissubjecttochangewithoutnotice.Donotfinalizeadesignwiththisinformation.Theproductsdescribedinthisdocumentmaycontaindesigndefectsorerrorsknownaserratawhichmaycausetheproducttodeviatefrompublishedspecifications.Currentcharacterizederrataareavailableonrequest.ContactyourlocalIntelsalesofficeoryourdistributortoobtainthelatestspecificationsandbeforeplacingyourproductorder.Copiesofdocumentswhichhaveanordernumberandarereferencedinthisdocument,orotherIntelliterature,maybeobtainedbycalling1-800-548-4725,orbyvisitingIntel’sWebsite at www.intel.com.Copyright©2015IntelCorporation.Allrightsreserved.Intel,theIntellogo,Xeon,VTune,andXeonPhiaretrademarksofIntelCorporationintheU.S.and/orothercountries.*Othernamesandbrandsmaybeclaimedasthepropertyofothers. 0115/DW/HBD/PDF 331849-001US

1 Source:IntelandANSYSperformancetests,October2014.Previous-generationserverconfiguration:2xIntel®Xeon®processorE5-2697v2(12cores,2.7GHz,8GT/s,130W),64GBDDR3-1600MHzmemory(8x8GB),1x600GBSASHDDstorage,RedHatEnterpriseLinuxServerrelease6.5,ANSYSMechanical16.0DMP.Newserverconfiguration:2xIntel®Xeon®processorE5-2697v3(14cores,2.6GHz,9.6GT/s,145W),64GBDDR4-2133MHzmemory (8x8GB),Intel®DataCenterSolid-StateDriveS35000Series800GB,RedHatEnterpriseLinuxServerrelease6.5,ANSYSMechanical16.0DMP.PerformancemeasuredoneachsystemwithandwithoutoneIntel®XeonPhi™ 7120coprocessor.

2SoftwareandworkloadsusedinperformancetestsmayhavebeenoptimizedforperformanceonlyonIntelmicroprocessors.Performancetests,suchasSYSmarkandMobileMark,aremeasuredusingspecificcomputersystems,components,software,operationsandfunctions.Anychangetoanyofthosefactorsmaycausetheresultstovary.Youshouldconsultotherinformationandperformanceteststoassistyouinfullyevaluatingyourcontemplatedpurchases,including the performance of that product when combined with other products.

ANSYS worked with Intel to optimize ANSYS Mechanical for the latest Intel® processor and coprocessor innovations using Intel® Software Development products, such as the Intel® Math Kernel Library (MKL), Intel® compilers, and the Intel® VTune™ Performance Analyzer. Based on these efforts, both the Windows* and Linux* versions of ANSYS Mechanical 16.0 (including the SMP and DMP versions of each) can utilize one or more Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors when present on the server or workstation platform. Highly parallel matrix mathematics code segments are offloaded to the coprocessor to increase throughput. The application workload is automatically balanced across the processors and coprocessor to optimize total throughput.

ANSYS and Intel engineers ran benchmarks to measure the performance benefits across a mix of current and previous-generation software and hardware (two-socket servers). The following results indicate the performance gains achieved in each upgrade scenario:

• Upgrade previous-generation hardware and add acoprocessor for up to 3.1x higher performance1,2.Gains of up to 3.1x were achieved for ANSYSMechanical 16.0 DMP when upgrading from the IntelXeon processor E5-2600 v2 family to the Intel Xeonprocessor E5-2600 v3 family and adding one ormore Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors.

• Add one or more coprocessors to a current-generationhardware/software platform for up to 1.7x higherperformance1,2. Adding an Intel Xeon Phi coprocessorto a server powered by the Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3family increased performance by up to 1.7x for ANSYSMechanical 16.0. You can add an additional Intel XeonPhi coprocessor for even greater performance.

Increasing Value through Ongoing CollaborationFuture Intel Xeon processors and Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors will continue to raise the bar for performance, parallelism, and energy-efficiency. ANSYS and Intel will continue to work together to deliver optimized and tested solutions that deliver better value together. Since ANSYS licensing models allow no-cost upgrades to the latest software releases, refreshing to the latest Intel server platforms provides a reliable, low-risk method for regularly increasing the overall capability and value of mission-critical simulation tools.

ANSYS Simulation Software

Intel Xeon Phi Product Family

Intel and ANSYS Partner Web Site

Intel in Technical Computing

LEARN MORE

SOLUTION BRIEF Intel® Xeon® Phi Coprocessor

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Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2697 v3Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2697 v2 + 1 Intel® Xeon Phi™ coprocessor 7120A

Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2697 v3 + 1 Intel® Xeon Phi™ coprocessor 7120A

ANSYS Mechanical 16.0 V15ln-2 DMP