OpenFOAM Performance with Cornelis Networks OPX

This article presents a technical report on the performance and scalability of OpenFOAM when utilized with Cornelis Networks' Omni-Path Express (OPX) on 3rd Generation Intel Xeon Processors. The report compares the performance of OpenFOAM benchmarks executed on clusters connected via Cornelis OPX and NVIDIA InfiniBand HDR fabrics. The focus is on the motorbike tutorial case, which is analyzed at resolutions of 20 million and 42 million cells to assess the impact of the fabric on application runtime and scalability. The findings indicate that a single 100Gbps rail of Cornelis OPX achieves performance levels comparable to NVIDIA InfiniBand HDR operating at 200Gbps across a 16-node cluster. Additionally, the article discusses price-performance metrics, showing that Cornelis OPX clusters provide superior job throughput per fabric cost. The report concludes with technical specifications of the system configuration used for testing, emphasizing the capabilities of Cornelis OPX in high-performance computing environments.