MSC.Nastran V70.7 Serial Test Results

This page contains the results of several jobs running on different hardware platforms. Each job was run by hardware partners. For best price performance results based on Linux please contact Brad Kindorf

Below is a summary of the test problems.

Name Ndof Description SOL MEM SCR Disk Used Total I/O Comments
LGQDF 93,375 Cube w/ interior 108 100 Mb 600 Mb 1.3 Tb 76 Frequency Increments
XLEMF 658,354 Car Body 111 400 Mb 9000 Mb 474 Gb 449 + 39 Roots
XLOOP 486,573 Car Body 200 1700 Mb 26 Gb 1700 Gb 3 Design cycles, 500+roots
XLRST 739,651 Engine 101 80 Mw 4000 Mb 18 Gb
XLTDF 529,257 Car Body 108 450 Mb 5000 Mb 209 Gb 32 Frequency Increments
XXCMD 1,323,787 Car Body 103 800 Mb 43 Gb 2.4 Tb 1088 Roots
MEM and SCR is per task.

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

Vendor Hardware O/S
CRAY SV1 UNICOS 10.0
Compaq HPC320 (ES40 EV67 667 MHz) UNIX 4.0
HP HP 9000 N4000 440 MHz PA8500 HP-UX 11.0
intel nt intel dell PIII 500 MHz Windows NT 4.0 (build 1381)
IBM RS/6000 SP 375 MHz POWER3 SMP AIX 4.3
NEC SX-5 Server (4 GFlops) SuperUX 9.2
SGI Origin 2000 / 400 MHz IRIX64 6.5
Sun E4000 336 MHz Solaris 7
For best price performance results based on Linux please contact Brad Kindorf


Vendor elapsed CPU (User+Sys)
CRAY 17653 17623
Compaq 12881 12471
HP 10289 10267
IBM 8924 8678
intel NT 28557 28526
NEC 5543 5461
SGI 16326 16265
Sun 28674 28669


Times (sec) for XLEMF
Vendor elapsed CPU (User+Sys)
CRAY 7545 7386
Compaq 6526 6464
HP 8366 8323
IBM 7253 6762
intel NT 48432 27040
NEC 3397 2755
SGI 10820 10780
Sun 26316 26301


Times (sec) for XLOOP
Vendor elapsed CPU (User+Sys)
CRAY 48304 47483
Compaq 53928 52379
HP 50012 49437
IBM 38193 31500
NEC 15323 15143
SGI 52291 48147
Sun 155208 155099


Times (sec) for XLRST
Vendor elapsed CPU (User+Sys)
CRAY 2681 2564
Compaq 679 657
HP 666 641
IBM 670 607
intel NT 2343 1728
NEC 1208 1190
SGI 953 936
Sun 2255 2248


Times (sec) for XLTDF
Vendor elapsed CPU (User+Sys)
CRAY 38810 38377
Compaq 22772 22730
HP 16344 16327
IBM 15248 15121
intel NT 75059 59920
NEC 6694 6666
SGI 23102 23033
Sun 53834 53826


Times (sec) for XXCMD
Vendor elapsed CPU (User+Sys)
CRAY 31451 30966
Compaq 33251 32669
HP 53935 53308
IBM 42792 40292
intel NT 260218 153531
NEC 10519 10381
SGI 55724 55392
SUN 166221 165973

Additional Comments:

Hardware Details:

  • CRAY 
        Model:            SV 1
    OS Level:         UNICOS 10.0
  • Compaq 
        Model:            HPC320 (ES40 EV67 667 MHz)
    OS Level:         UNIX 4.0 
    Memory:           8Gb
    Hardware Options: 4 Mb L2 cache, Cross bar interconnect to CPU and memory.
  • HP 
        Model:            9000 N4000 440 Mhz PA8500
    OS Level:         HP-UX 11.0
    Memory:           16Gb
    Virtual Mem:      swap was configured as approx. 1.5x real memory
    Disk:             fibre channel striped array: 2 controllers, 
                      10 disks (10,000 rpm, 18gb)
                      (each system had 1 of these)
  • IBM 
        Model:            RS/6000 SP with 375 MHz POWER3 SMP nodes
    OS Level:         AIX 4.3
    Memory:           8 Gb
    Disk:             The scratch file system on each node was striped across
                      eight 9.1 Gb SSA disks.
    Notes:            The following command was used to optimize I/O performance.
                      It is recommended for AIX systems running MSC.Nastran.
                      /usr/samples/kernel/vmtune -p5 -P10 -r8 -R128 -f120 
                      -F560  -W128
  • intel NT DELL 
        Model:            Pentium III Xeon 500 MHz
    OS Level:         Windows NT 4.0 
    Memory:           1 Gb
    Disk:             Raid Controller, 10,000 RPM. 
    Cache:            16Mb Cache on controller, 1Mb Cache on PIII Xeon.
  • NEC 
        Model:            SX-5 Server (4 GFlops)
    OS Level:         SuperUX 9.2 
    Memory:           128 Gb (real memory)
  • SGI 
        Model:            Origin 2000 / 400 MHz
    OS Level:         IRIX64 6.5
    Memory:           64 Gb           
    Notes:            There is an error in mpirun if the number of tasks
                      is greater or equal to 8.  Therefore, runs with
                      8+ processors were manipulated manually.
  • SUN 
        Model:            E6500 400 MHz
    OS Level:         Solaris 7
    Memory:           1Gb
    Virtual Mem:      swap was configured as approx. 2x real memory
    Disk:             E6500 with 2 A5200 fibre channel striped arrays: 
                      2 controllers, each A5200 with 11 disks (10,000 rpm, 9gb)