Inventor Multiple GPU support for FEA?

[JH81]

I've spent a bit of time searching for an answer on this and can only find info from 2016.

Does the latest release support multiple GPU's for FEA calculations in Stress Analysis environment? 

Cheers

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Inventor FEA is multi-threaded and multi-cored enabled. Please see the following link.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcartic...

I am not sure what you meant by multi-GPU support.

Many thanks!

[JH81]

Thanks for the reply. The link is referring to CPU support. By GPU I meant Graphics Processing Unit or 'Graphics card'. Does Inventor utilize GPU's at all during FEA? 

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! GPU is heart of a graphics. Every operation in Inventor leading to change in graphics utilizes GPU. However, Inventor does not perform special programming on GPU. Do you mind elaborating why you are asking these questions? Are you encountering performance issue? Do you have an example to share?

Many thanks!

[I_Forge_KC]

You're probably seeing a lot of buzz around Ansys Live and Live Parts - which are a GPU based FEA/CFD solvers. Unfortunately, the codebase for Inventor's FEA predates most GPU approaches to engineering calculations. The PlassoTech engine was originally developed in the mid-2000s, long before the high-end CUDAs of today were a reality.

This is an area of interest (and focus) for certain teams within Autodesk. For example, Autodesk Generative Design utilizes a CUDA cluster for its computations (though they are in the cloud instead of desktop level). What that means going forward - who knows.

I'd love to have an Autodesk product that competes with Ansys Live. There is something so satisfying about getting instant results as I make edits to my models. I hate SpaceClaim as an interface, but the solver is a dream.