MD Nastran V2006 Parallel Test Results

This page contains the results of several jobs running on different hardware platforms. All jobs were run by hardware partners.
Current partner contact information is here.

Below is a summary of the test problems.

Name Ndof Description SOL MEM SCR Disk Used Total I/O Comments
XLTDF 529,027 Car Body 108 450 Mb 5 Gb 209 Gb 32 Frequency Increments
XLXDY 286,216 Truck Against wall 700 300 Mb ---Gb ---Gb LS-Dyna Crash
XXCMD 1,584,622 Car Body 103 1800 Mb 43 Gb 2400 Gb 1073 Roots
XXCMDA 1,584,622 Car Body 103 1800 Mb 4 Gb 800 Gb XXCMD with ACMS
XXIMA 2,236,538 Engine 600 300 Mb --- Gb --- Gb Marc Non-Linear

Below is a description of the hardware used. Details regarding computer, disk, network and OS configuration are listed at the bottom of this page.

Vendor Hardware O/S
HP DL140 Intel/woodcrest 3000 MHz Linux RedHat 4
HP DL145 AMD/Opteron 2600MHz Linux RedHat 4
HP RX3600 Intel/Itanium 2 1600 MHz HPUX B.11.23
IBM POWER 5 p570 2200 MHz POWER 5 AIX 5.3
Intel Xeon Woodcrest Intel Xeon 5160 (Woodcrest 3000 MHz) Linux RedHat 4
SGI Altix SGI Altix Itanium Montecito 1600 MHz Linux SuSE9 ProPack 4
SUN SFX4100 AMD/Opteron 2800MHz Linux SLES9
SUN X4600 AMD/Opteron 3000 MHz Linux SLES9


Times (sec) for xltdf
Vendor Serial DMP=2 DMP=4 DMP=8 DMP=16
HP:DL140 3000MHz 4100 2202 1901
HP:DL145 2600MHz 5716 3937 2172
HP:RX3600 Itanium HPUX 1600MHz 2829 1619 1056
IBM:p570 AIX 2200MHz 2340 1216 672 424 375
Intel:Xeon Linux 3000MHz 4226 2510 2045
SUN:SFX4100 Opteron 2800MHz 5997 2936 1562 839 501


Times (sec) for xlxdy
Vendor Serial Nproc=2 Nproc=4
HP:DL140 3000MHz 4691 2750 1767
HP:DL145 2600MHz 5955 3732 3810
IBM:p570 AIX 2200MHz 5945 3182 1702
Intel:Xeon Linux 3000MHz 4869 2898 1753
SGI:Altix 1600MHz 6365 3156 1355
SUN:X4600 Opteron 3000MHz 5871 3407


Times (sec) for xxcmd
Vendor Serial DMP=2 DMP=4 DMP=8
HP:DL145 2600MHz 18142 18263 13279
HP:RX3600 Itanium HPUX 1600MHz 6002 4856 4561
IBM:p570 AIX 2200MHz 5474 3424 1568 1071
Intel:Xeon Linux 3000MHz 11475 9264 8986
SUN:SFX4100 Opteron 2800MHz 15449 8722 5102 3566


Times (sec) for xxcmd2
Vendor Serial DMP=2 DMP=4 DMP=8
HP:DL145 2600MHz 2402 1680 1221
HP:RX3600 Itanium HPUX 1600MHz 1506 1020 828
IBM:p570 AIX 2200MHz 1107 714 505 411
Intel:Xeon Linux 3000MHz 1600 1043 897
SGI:Altix 1600MHz 1358 891 577
SUN:SFX4100 Opteron 2800MHz 2438 1510 972 750


SOL 600 uses a different algorithm for Parallel analysis than for Serial. This difference results in "super scaling."
Times (sec) for xxima
Vendor Serial NPROC=2 NPROC=4
HP:DL145 2600MHz 14307 3013 1810
IBM:p570 AIX 2200MHz 8208 1938 1350
Intel:Xeon Linux 3000MHz 11919 2067 1599
SGI:Altix 1600MHz 11905 3299 2215
SUN:X4600 Opteron 3000MHz 15369 2191 1311

Additional Comments:

Hardware Details:

  • HP DL140 
        Model:            DL140
    CPU:              Intel Xeon Woodcrest 3000 MHz (4 CPUs)
    OS Level:         RedHat Linux 4 update 3
    Memory:           16 Gb
    Disk:             5 striped U320 disks
  • HP DL145 
        Model:            DL145
    CPU:              AMD Opteron 2600 MHz (4 CPUs)
    OS Level:         RedHat Linux 4 update 3
    Memory:           16 Gb
    Disk:             5 striped U320 disks
  • HP RX3600 
        Model:            RX3600
    CPU:              Itanium 2 1600 MHz (2 socket / dual core)
    OS Level:         HPUX B.11.23
    Memory:           16 Gb, FSB was at 533MHz
    Disk:             24-way stripe on 2 DS2405's.  I/O system is PCI-X,
                      2 AB379A dual port FC adapters (4 FC links total)
  • IBM POWER p5-570 
        Model:            System p5 570
    CPU:              16 POWER5+ 2.2 GHz CPUs (8 socket, dual core)
    OS Level:         AIX 5.3 TL04
    Memory:           128 Gb (64 GB large pages)
    Disk:             JFS2 striped at 256kb on 21 (15kRPM) disks, 4 Ultra 320 channels.
    Special:          mio=16gb, export MP_SHARED_MEMORY=yes
  • Intel Xeon Woodcrest 
        Model:            Woodcrest (2 socket / quad core)
    CPU:              Dual-Core Intel Xeon 5160 Processor 3000 MHz
    OS Level:         RedHat 4
    Memory:           16 Gb
    Disk:             
    Special:          MKL 9 was used.
  • SGI Altix 
        Model:            IA64 (256 CPUs - several Bricks)
    CPU:              1600MHz 
    OS Level:         SuSE 9, ProPack 4SP3
    Memory:           500 Gb - NUMA memory
    Disk:             16 15k rpm TP900 disks in the volume of the file system.
                      The stripe unit size of the file system is 512KB.
  • Sun 
        Model:            SFX 4100 (2 CPUs)
    CPU:              2800MHz 
    OS Level:         SuSE 9
    Memory:           8 Gb - NUMA memory
    Disk:
  • Sun 
        Model:            X4600 (16 nodes, 4 CPUs per node)
    CPU:              3000MHz 
    OS Level:         SuSE 9
    Memory:           32 Gb - NUMA memory
    Disk: