High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart

exaFOAM

Exploitation of Exascale Systems for Open-Source Computational Fluid Dynamics by Mainstream Industry
Logo for ExaFOAM project

exaFOAM is working to reduce bottlenecks in performance scaling for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) applications on massively parallel high-performance computing (HPC) systems.

 

Project Aims

exaFOAM aimed to enhance the performance scalability of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) applications on massively parallel high-performance computing (HPC) systems.

Project Achievements

The exaFOAM project published a series of benchmarks, ranging from microbenchmarks, up to industrial test cases and two grand challenges about high-fidelity airplane aerodynamics and gas turbine combustion. These can be found in the OpenFOAM HPC Technical Committee repository (https://develop.openfoam.com/committees/hpc/-/tree/develop/).

HLRS and Wikki GmbH have developed a new mesh and file format, named coherent, which eliminates bottlenecks in OpenFOAM workflows. The advantage of the coherent mesh format is that it drastically reduces the number of files that a file system must manage. Test versions are available on the public exaFOAM repositories (https://develop.openfoam.com/exafoam and https://gitlab.com/openfoam/community/exafoam), along with other developments.

Using the new developed coherent file format, members of the exaFOAM team successfully completed a benchmark simulation using HLRS’s supercomputer Hawk in which OpenFOAM scaled up to 4,096 nodes (524,288 CPU cores), which is the largest OpenFOAM simulation to this date (https://www.hlrs.de/news/detail/coherent-file-format-accelerates-time-to-solution-with-openfoam). For this achievement the team received the 19th HPC Innovation Excellence Award from Hyperion Research (https://insidehpc.com/2023/11/hyperion-research-announces-winners-of-hpc-innovation-excellence-awards-3/).

Future Objectives

Specially the activities porting OpenFOAM to GPUs are currently underway.

Runtime

01. April 2021 -
31. March 2024

Website

exafoam.eu

Categories

Exascale Computing

HPC for Industry

Departments

Numerical Methods and Libraries

Project and User Management, Accounting

Funding

H2020-JTI-EuroHPC-2019-1 (EuroHPC-03-2019)

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Project partners

  • ESI Group (FR, coordinator)
  • Cineca Consorzio Interuniversitario (IT)
  • E4 Computer Engineering SPA (IT)
  • Politecnico di Milano (IT)
  • Sveuciliste u Zagrebu, Fakultet Strojarstva I Brodogradnje (HR)
  • Upstream CFD GmbH (DE)
  • Technische Universität Darmstadt (DE)
  • Wikki Gesellschaft für numerische Kuntinuumsmechanik mbH (DE)
  • Universität Stuttgart (DE)
  • Barcelona Supercomputing Center (ES)
  • National Technical University of Athens (EL)
  • Universidade do Minho (PT)

Funded by

Logo: EuroHPC Joint Undertaking

This project has received funding from the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 956416.

BMBF Logo: Federal Ministry of Education and Research France National Funding Logo Spain National Funding Logo Italy National Funding Logo Croatia National Funding Logo Greece National Funding Logo Portugal National Funding Logo

The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Greece, and Portugal.

Contact

Photo Thomas Bönisch

Thomas Bönisch

Head, Project and User Management, Accounting

+49 711 685-87222 thomas.boenisch(at)hlrs.de
Photo Andreas Ruopp

Andreas Ruopp

Deputy Head, Department of Numerical Methods & Libraries

+49 711 685-87259 andreas.ruopp(at)hlrs.de

High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart Nobelstraße 19, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany

Contact & Location

+49 711 685-87269 info(at)hlrs.de

A member of the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing, HLRS is one of three German national centers for high-performance computing.

www.gauss-centre.eu

HLRS is a central unit of the University of Stuttgart.

www.uni-stuttgart.de/en/

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