Experiments and virtual prototyping for R&D with COMSOL Multiphysics

1. COMSOL Multiphysics:
Simulation and Development on clusters
R&D @ Clusters
Dr. Winfried Geis (Branch Manager)
COMSOL Multiphysics GmbH

2. Contents
• Who, when and what?
– Virtual prototyping with COMSOL Multiphysics
• Why
– Cluster support?
– COMSOL?
– Intel?
• Getting started:
– The COMSOL Desktop
– The Physics Interface Builder
• Live Demo
– Performance

3. Who should use it?
Experiments and virtual prototyping for R&D

4. • Time & money
• Only few of them make
it to market
• mathematical model
• PDEs
time innovationriscscosts understanding
Theory PrototypeMultiphysics simulation
• Parameter studies
• Optimization
• Virtual experiments
• Ideas for new design

5. What is COMSOL Multiphysics?
When should I use it?

6. Chemical reactions Acoustics
Electrodynamics Heat transport
CFDStructural mechanics
The real world is Multiphysics!
Development/
equations
Particles
Simulation with COMSOL Multiphysics

7. Product Suite – Version 4.3b

8. Why clusters? When to use them?
The right setting for each task …
• „Small“, highly non-linear problems
… use the built-in SMP functionality of COMSOL to gain speed
during meshing, assembling, solving.
• Optimization studies and parametric sweeps (design optimization)
might require 50‐100 simulations
… ideal for clustering (scaling near 1) – more simulations, more
design options.
• Big real-world problems (100GB RAM and more)
… clusters enable bigger simulations (more details, more accuracy)

9. Why COMSOL?
Reduced complexity
• Control the cluster job
from the COMSOL GUI
• Ease deployment for
larger scale clusters
Mainstream HPC
• Address needs of
traditional
supercomputing (power
users)
• Address emerging cross-
industry/cross-
department trends
• Enable design engineers
to harness the power of
HPC
Broad Ecosystem
• Intel Cluster Ready ®
• Drive larger universe of
end-users, developers
and system
administrators
• COMSOL API:
development tools for
parallel applications
Make parallelism more accessible as well for developers and
researchers as for design engineers to address future
computational needs.

10. Acoustic sound pressure level in car interior.
Example: Design optimization
• Support for geometric parameter
sweeps
• Multiple-parameter sweeping
• Wrap parametric sweeps around
any solver
• Cluster solving:
COMSOL Server
CPU CPU CPU CPU
CAD
program
COMSOL
Client
LiveLink
Cluster

11. Why Intel?
• How COMSOL parallelizes:
– All COMSOL Multiphysics solvers are multicore and cluster-enabled for
several years.
– Supported cluster platforms: Linux and Windows HPC Server.
• How Intel technologies help:
– Intel Cluster Ready ®
– Intel® MPI
– Intel® MKL
– Intel Trace Analyzer and Collector

12. Getting started

13. Interactive simulation environment
Model Builder
Build, access and
Control the model
• CAD/Geometry
• Materials
• Physics
• Mesh
• Solver
• Results
• Job submission and
control
Graphics
Fast graphics, numerous visualization technologies,
show all the plots and values needed.
COMSOL Desktop™
intuitive, control the
complete pre-, post-
and modeling process

14. Optimum frequency Impedance
Demo: Balanced Patch Antenna for 6 GHz
3D antenna simulation for telecommunication

15. Balanced Patch Antenna for 6 GHz
• In compact wireless equipment the
antenna have always been an obstacle
for the integration to small sizes
• The patch antenna is a compact antenna
suitable for easy automated fabrication
• The antenna is balanced in order to reduce the interference with other
devices in the wireless equipment
• Goal: find the optimum frequency of radiation from a frequency sweep

16. Results (parametric sweep)
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
1 2 3 4 5
Solutiontime(s)
#Nodes
Patch Antenna, 1793132 DoF
BiCGStab
FGMRES
GMRES
Benchmark description
Comsol version 4.3a, v. 4.3.1.161
Model Size 1.8e6 DoF
Solver type Iterative
Distribution type Dist. parametric sweep
Server type Intel 6-blade modular
Number of Cores 6
Processor type Intel® Xeon® CPU E5645
Clock Frequency 2.40 GHz
Memory 48GB DDR3, 1333 MHz
Network Gigabit Ethernet