MD Nastran MDR3 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 Total I/O Comments
xl0tdf1 529,257 car body 111 520 Mb 5 Gb 190 Gb Direct Frequency Response
xx0cmd2 1,315,340 Car Body 103 1800 Mb 13 Gb 202 Gb Normal Modes with ACMS
xl0xdy0 286,216 Truck 700 300 Mb     Crash Analysis
md0mdf1 42,066 Half Sphere 108 1000 Mb 392 Mb 81 Gb Direct Frequency response w/ exterior acoustics, and UMFPACK
xx0wmd0 3,799,278 Car Body 103 2000 Mb 169 Gb 3600 Gb Frequency Response w/ (interior) acoustics, and ACMS

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 DL160 G5 Intel X5472 3000 MHz Linux RHEL 5.2
HP BL465c G5 AMD 2384 Shanghai 2700 MHz Linux SLES 10.2
HP BL860c Intel/Itanium 2 1600 MHz Linux RHEL 4
IBM POWER 6 p570 4700 MHz POWER 6 AIX 5.3
Intel Xeon Nehalem Intel Xeon (Nehalem 2930 MHz) (24Gb/4 SSD) or (48Gb w/o SSD) or ( 24Gb/16 SSD) RHEL 5.3
Intel Xeon Harpertown Intel Xeon (Harpertown 3200 MHz) Linux RedHat 5.1
SUN X6275 Nehalem Quad Core Intel 5570 2.93 MHz Linux SLES 10 SP1
SUN X6250 Dual Core Intel 3330 MHz Linux SLES 10 SP1


Elapsed Times (sec) for XL0TDF1
Vendor Serial DMP=2 DMP=4 DMP=8
HP:DL160 Xeon 3418 1757 898 484
HP:BL465c Opteron * 4736 2411 1586 784
HP:BL860C Itanium * 2865 2127 1966
Intel Nehalem w/ 4 SSD * 2149 1159 737 618
Intel Nehalem * 2295 1162 694 737
Intel Harpertown * 3581 1903 1175
IBM:P6 570 ( I4 ) * 1709 912 513 326
IBM:P6 570 ( I8 ) * 1632 863 477 306
Sun X6275 2248 957 496 274
Sun X6250 w/ Lustre 1573 808 679
Sun X6250 3358 1729 876 705


Elapsed Times (sec) for xx0cmd2
Vendor Serial DMP=2 DMP=4 DMP=8
HP:DL160 Xeon 1168 734 898 351
HP:BL465c Opteron * 1095 675 507
HP:BL860C Itanium * 1596 1046 812
Intel Nehalem w/ 4 SSD * 887 639 405
Intel Nehalem * 915 561 408
Intel Harpertown * 1142 727 812
IBM:P6 570 ( I4 ) * 959 616 419 343
IBM:P6 570 ( I8 ) * 920 574 392 322
SUN:X6275 840 532 391 279
Sun X6250 1253 796 576 450


Elapsed Times (sec) for xl0xdy0
Vendor Serial DMP=2 DMP=4
HP:DL160 Xeon 3410 1871 994
HP:BL465c Opteron 3750 2063 1252
HP:BL860C Itanium 6726
Intel Nehalem w/ 4 SSD 2534 1486 881
Intel Nehalem 2467 1537 905
Intel Harpertown 1958 1069
IBM:P6 570 ( I4 ) 4921 2692 1506
IBM:P6 570 ( I8 ) 4921 2692 1504


Elapsed Times (sec) for md0mdf1
Vendor Serial DMP=2 DMP=4
HP:DL160 Xeon 1218 617 311
HP:BL465c Opteron * 1385 693 365
HP:BL860C Itanium * 1171 873 476
Intel Nehalam w/ 4 SSD * 902 479 235
Intel Nehalem * 922 470 251
Intel Harpertown * 1167 612 314
IBM:P6 570 ( I4 ) * 911 469 242
Sun X6275 880 442 223
Sun X6250 1153 576 291


Elapsed Times (sec) for xx0wmd0
Vendor Serial SMP=2 DMP=2 SMP=2 DMP=2
HP:BL465c Opteron * 16467 16445 11064 10816
HP:BL860C Itanium * 24194 21741 18135 16822
Intel Nehalem w/ 4 SSD * 15763 11958
Intel Nehalem w/ 16 SSD (I4) * 10881 6507 4700
Intel Nehalem w/ 16 SSD (I8) * 11352 6458
Intel Nehalem * 17651 13555 13068 11045
Intel Harpertown * 21319 16537
IBM:P6 570 ( I4 ) * 13699 12178 9353 8563
IBM:P6 570 ( I8 ) * 14272 12406 9771 8690
Sun 21428 17322 19032 16930

Additional Comments:

* These Parallel jobs were run on a single node with multiple CPUs. Other systems were run on "clusters" with multiple nodes. In general, MD Nastran runs better on clusters. This information should be considered when comparing numbers. MSC apologizes for the discrepancy of runs.

Hardware Details:

  • HP DL160 G5 
        Model:            DL160 G5
    CPU:              Intel Xeon 5472 3000 MHz (2 Quad Cores)
    OS Level:         RedHat Linux 5.2
    Memory:           64 Gb
    Disk:             4 SAS disks per node
  • HP BL465c G5 
        Model:            BL465c
    CPU:              AMD Shanghai 2384 2700 MHz (2 Quad Cores)
    OS Level:         Linux SLES 10.2
    Memory:           32 Gb
    Disk:             BL40c storage blade with 6 72GB 15 K rpm disks
  • HP BL860c 
        Model:            BL860c
    CPU:              Itanium 2 1600 MHz (2 Processors / 4 Cores)
    OS Level:         RedHat Linux 4 
    Memory:           48 Gb
    Disk:             SB40c storage blade with 6 disks
  • Intel Xeon Harpertown 
        Model:            Xeon 5482 Harpertown (2 CPUs / 4 CORES)
    CPU:              2 Quad-Core Intel Xeon Harpertown Processor 3200 MHz, C0 Stepping
    OS Level:         RedHat 5.1
    Memory:           32 Gb
    Disk:             4 X 73 Gb U320 15K RPM Software Raid 0
  • Intel Xeon Nehalem 
        Model:            Xeon 5570 Nehalem (2 CPUs / Quad CORES)
    CPU:              2 Quad-Core Intel Xeon Nehalem Processor 2.93GHz, C0 Stepping 6.4 GT/s QPI
                      Turbo: enabled, EIST: enabled, HT: enabled
    OS Level:         RedHat 5.3 beta ( 2.6.18-120.e15)
    Memory w/o SSD:   48Gb DDR3-1067MHz ( 12X 4Gb)
    Disk w/o SSD:     4 X 146Gb 15K RPM U320 SCSI SW Raid0
    Memory w/ 4 SSD:    24Gb DDR3-1067MHz ( 12X 2Gb)
    Disk w/ 4 SSD:      4 X Intel X25-E SATA Solid State Disk SW Raid0
    Memory w/ 16 SSD:    24Gb DDR3-1067MHz ( 12X 2Gb)
    Disk w/ 16 SSD:      2 HW RAID0 / 8xSSD=16 SSD.s total
  • IBM POWER 6-570 
        Model:            System p6 570
    CPU:              POWER6 4.7 GHz CPUs (4 socket, dual core)
    OS Level:         AIX 5.3 TL06, ESSL 4.3.0.3, POE 4.3.1.0
    Memory:           64 Gb (64 GB large pages)
    Disk:             JFS2 striped on 24 (15k rpm) U320 disks
  • Sun 
        Model:            X6275 (8 CPUs)
    CPU:              Intel 5570 2.93 GHz Processors
    OS Level:         SLES 10 SP 1
    Memory:           48 Gb DDR3 1333 MHz
    Disk:             Sun Storage 2540's with X4270's as MDS and ODS servers
    Lustre            Lustre Version 1.6.4.3:
  • Sun 
        Model:            X6250 (2 CPUs)
    CPU:              Intel 5260 3.33 GHz Processors
    OS Level:         SLES 10 SP 1
    Memory:           667 MHz DDR2R.  Memory varied on each node from 12Gb to 66Gb.
    Disk:             Sun StorageTek 6140 array
    Lustre            Lustre Version 1.6.4.3:
                      Sun Fire X2200 M2's supporting server: 2 data servers and one meta data server
    Interconects:     Infiniband GridStack-4.1.5_7-sles-k2.6.16.21-0.8-smp-x86