Appropriate GPU card for FEM Simulation

Hello,

I wish to purchase couple of workstations ($ 7000-8000). The primary function would be to run FEM simulations (high velocity impact problems). Now, I know that GPU cards can accelerate the performance. However, I also read online that the double-precision capability of GPU cards is currently not that good which for me is must. In this context, I have two queries: (1) Should I go for a CPU only workstation (Xeon) or a CPU-GPU setup, and (2) If CPU-GPU setup is an option which GPU card should I go with ?

With Regards

Sachin

Answer 1

[Joss Knight]

For double precision computation you should use one of NVIDIA's Tesla series of cards intended for high performance compute. The latest desktop card is the Tesla K40 and the latest server card is the dual Tesla K80. The next compute card is the Pascal P100 which has been announced, but I'm not sure is publicly available yet. NVIDIA have also suggested there will be a desktop version of that card.

This Wikipedia article has a useful list of statistics for the Tesla cards.

[Walter Roberson]

Additional data http://www.anandtech.com/show/10433/nvidia-announces-pci-express-tesla-p100

[Sachin S. Gautam]

Dear Mr. Knight and Mr. Roberson

Thank you very much for your reply. I have started to look in this direction. I hope I will finalize my configuration in a weeks time.

With Regards

Dr. S. S. Gautam IIT Guwahati

[Walter Roberson]

The page http://wccftech.com/nvidia-tesla-p100-gp100-june-2016/ claims that the public sales of the GP100 will begin 1Q2017, but that some supercomputer centers in the USA can already get them.

The previous discussion at https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/301435-fft-spread-to-multiple-gpu-s suggests that the K80 is not always faster than the K40