Hyperworks Tips & Tricks - OptiStruct GPU Computing
Hyperworks Tips & Tricks
OptiStruct – GPU Computing
Product Version: OptiStruct 2019.1 or above
Topic description: A Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is a system which can be used to improve the performance of computationally intensive engineering applications. GPU Computing is a process which uses the GPU to execute computationally intensive sections of the application and the rest of the code runs on the CPU.
General Overview
GPU can be used to accelerate the sparse direct equation solver through the NVIDIA CUDA programming model. GPU computing is implemented by off-loading most of the computation intensive work to the GPU and concurrently overlapping the communication and data transfer between the CPU cores and the GPU.
- GPU computing is available for linear static analysis/nonlinear analysis(PCG solver)/optimization and eigenvalue analysis using AMSES and Lanczos eigensolvers.
- GPU computing is available on Linux and Windows platforms.
- GPU computing is NOT supported in the SPMD module.
- NVIDIA Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta architecture-based Tesla and Quadro graphic cards are supported. Recommended cards are Tesla P100, Tesla V100, Quadro GP100, and Quadro GV100 for OptiStruct GPU. Compatible drivers for the graphics card will need to be installed by the user prior to launching OptiStruct GPU.
Commands to Activate GPU
To run OptiStruct from a Windows DOS prompt, type the following:
<install_dir>\hwsolvers\scripts\optistruct.bat input.fem -gpu
To run on Unix from the command line, type the following:
<install_dir>/altair/scripts/optistruct input.fem -gpu
To run OptiStruct from Altair Compute Console:
Figure 1. Altair Compute Console with GPU option (OptiStruct solver is selected)
In the .out file there are some information about GPU usage. For example,
*** INFORMATION # 9196
Using 1 NVIDIA cards for GPU acceleration.
*** INFORMATION # 2752
GPU device with GPUID = 1 is used for computation.
Device name = Quadro M2000M, with compute capability 5.0.
GPU memory free = 3418.05 MB, total = 4096.00 MB.
There are two more options for GPU. Please see the table below.
| Option | Description | Supported Platform |
| -gpu | Activates GPU computing. | All Platforms |
| -gpuid | N: Integer, Optional, Selects the GPU card. Default = 1 | All Platforms |
| -ngpu | N: Integer, Identifies the number of GPU cards to be used for the solution. Default = 1. Maximum = 8 | All Platforms |
Table 1. Commands to Activate GPU
Monitor the GPU usage on Windows
Task Manager on Windows 10 can be used to monitor the GPU usage. Please see the screenshot below.
Figure 2. Windows Task Manager (run OptiStruct with GPU option)
For more information and to access the Altair OptiStruct GPU Computing help, please navigate to Help > OptiStruct > User Guide > High Performance Computing > Graphics Processing Unit (GPU).