Nickel or Iron: Which Is Better for Your CONVERGE™ Job on Rescale's Platform?

CONVERGE™ from Convergent Science is a prominent computational fluid design simulation program used in engine design, and its performance on different core types was evaluated using Rescale’s cloud simulation platform. The analysis compared the performance and cost of Nickel (HPC+) and Iron (HPC InfiniBand) core types, using a benchmark job that simulates a curving soccer ball. Although Nickel cores were found to be faster and more cost-effective for small clusters of up to 64 cores due to lower network bandwidth requirements, Iron cores offered superior performance for mid-sized clusters with more than 128 cores, attributed to their higher network bandwidth capacity. This performance disparity is linked to the communication overhead and slow interconnection experienced by Nickel cores at higher core numbers, highlighting Iron's efficiency for larger-scale simulations despite its higher cost.