Organized by the OpenFOAM HPC Technical Committee, in this mini-symposium the industrial testcase of external flow over a static DrivAer automotive model is used for the performance benchmark.The main Objective is to evaluate the efficiency and scalability of OpenFOAM on different hardware platforms (hardware track) and compare the performance of latest OpenFOAM code enhancements and flavors (software track).

For any questions and/or expressing your interest for participating, please send an email to the mini-symposium organizers: Mark Wasserman and Ivan Spisso.

 

Objectives

• Evaluate the efficiency and scalability of OpenFOAM on different hardware platforms (hardware track)
• Compare the performance of latest OpenFOAM code enhancements and flavors (software track)
• Propose unified metrics that will help guide the future development of OpenFOAM on next-generation hardware
• Bring together hardware vendors, industrial users and developers to discuss OpenFOAM performance
• Publish benchmark performance results of OpenFOAM on state-of-the-art hardware for guidance to users and developers

 

Scope

• The focus of this mini-symposium will be the industrial testcase of
• external flow over a static DrivAer automotive model (case 2 of AutoCFD4), provided courtesy of AutoCFD4 *
• A full OpenFOAM setup of the testcase, including mesh, physical model, and solver selection can be found here
• Wind tunnel and numerical reference results shall also be made available soon
• In the hardware track, participants are invited to submit and present results obtained with the pre-defined setup using an official OpenFOAM version, on any combination of hardware
• In the software track, participants are invited to submit and present results obtained with any OpenFOAM version and custom solver, on any hardware, so long as the mesh and physical modelling remains true to source, and accuracy is retained
• Participants are also invited to submit and present HPC enhancements related to pre- and post-processing of OpenFOAM data, applied to the above testcase

* Special thanks to UpstreamCFD for providing the OpenFOAM-specific setup of AutoCFD4 test-case 2

 

Rules (Hardware Track)

• Objective: Demonstrate and compare the performance of OpenFOAM on various hardware configurations
• Hardware: unconstrained, so long as it supports standard OpenFOAM
• Software: OpenFOAM.com v2412
• Compiler: unconstrained
• MPI: unconstrained
• Case setup: fixed, no changes allowed (except for no. of processors for decomposition)
• Mandatory pre-processing stages (decomposition, renumbering, potential foam init)

 

Rules (Software/Open Track)

• Objective: Showcase code/hardware optimizations that improve performance (time, energy), whilst retaining the basic level of accuracy as demonstrated with standard OpenFOAM
• Hardware: unconstrained
• Software: unconstrained, OpenFOAM-based code
• Testcase: Static DrivAer benchmark based upon AutoCFD4 test-case 2 with fixed mesh and physical modelling (temporal and spatial discretization, turbulence model)
  • Steady-state, incompressible flow
  • RANS with kw-SST turbulence model
  • Pre-defined fvSchemes (changes allowed but have to be reported)
• Proposed topics for investigation: accelerators, pre-/post-processing (I/O), mixed-precision, linear solvers, renumbering/decomposition

 

Metrics

• Hardware/Software Track
• Single- and Multi-node Scalability
• Time-to-solution, incl. pre- and post-processing, excl. initialization*
• Energy-to-solution*
• FVOPS (finite volumes solved per second)
• Accuracy w.r.t reference solution obtained with standard OpenFOAM
  • Drag coefficient
  • Pressure coefficients at selected locations

* Automatic scripts will be provided to participants for analyzing metrics, in time for submission

 

Timeline

• February 13, 2025: Call for Participation + Release of test case
• February 29, 2025: Release of reference results
• March 30, 2025: Notice of intent to participate
• May 31, 2025: OpenFOAM Workshop regular registration deadline*
• June 1, 2025: Data submittal deadline
• July 1-2, 2025: Mini-symposium (part of OpenFOAM workshop)
• August 1, 2025: Release of full performance data + manuscript submission to the OpenFOAM journal

* Registration to OFW is required for participating in the OHC-1 mini-symposium

 

Organizing Committee

• Ivan Spisso, Leonardo Company
• Mark Wasserman, Huawei
• Sergey Lesnik, Wikki GmbH
• Charles Mockett, UpstreamCFD GmbH
• Fillipo Spiga, NVIDIA
• Neil Ashton, NVIDIA
• Gregor Olenik, TUM
• Elisabetta Boella, E4
• Simone Bna, CINECA
• Gavin Tabor, Univ. of Exeter