Discussion Forum

Hi all,

I ask you to your experiences with memory/processor configuration.

I got a new workstation with 2 XEON E5-2637 v3 (windows 10, 64bit). By default hyperthreading is activated (each CPU has 4 physical and 4 logical cores) and the memory is used in the NUMA mode. That means each CPU uses its own memory, what belongs to two numa-nodes. This should ensure the fastest memory access.

I have read a lot about it in the comsol knowledge base and the COMSOL 5.1 documentation.

Hyperthreading on/off
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COMSOL doesn't have any advantage from hyperthreading. For using hyperthreading by other software hyperthreading should be activated. Is there the risk, that COMSOL doesn't work optimal in this case? For example that COMSOL uses 8 cores of one CPU?

NUMA or Memory interleave
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NUMA should ensure the fastest memory access by the CPUs. But are the threads owned by COMSOL handled in that way, that they only use the memory block of the current NUMA node? At an older machine I got the results, that COMSOL works faster in the memory interleave mode, that means that both CPU access to one large memory block. This is because the memory access in NUMA mode of a CPU is fast in the case the CPU uses its own memory block (NUMA node). Access to memory of the other NUMA node (for example by assembling) is much slower.

What would be the best choise (hyperthreading on/off, NUMA on/off)? I think these questions should be discussed by the COMSOL developers and experts. But what are your experiences?

Thanks a lot!

Best regards, Michael