Sonnet Suites - V12 Multi-Threaded EM Engine
EM Analysis with Parallel Processing on your Desktop
Starting with Release 12, Sonnet’s electromagnetic (EM) simulations are performed more quickly by utilizing multiple CPU cores on the same computer in parallel, making complete use of the latest CPU technology from Intel and AMD*. The new EM analysis engine creates multiple processes, or threads, each of which solves a different part of the solution matrix on a different CPU core—all at the same time. The result is a dramatic decrease in overall simulation time.
The performance improvement you will see varies from example to example. Click here to see benchmark examples between Version 11 and Version 12.
The Technology
Current x86 processor technology is built around multiple computing cores on the same CPU. If they are efficiently applied to a numerically-intensive analysis, each of these cores can function like a separate parallel processor. Harnessing these cores in parallel can produce processing gains that scale nearly with the number of available cores.
Sonnet recognizes these processor technology advances, and has developed EM analysis engines that efficiently harness the power of parallel processing through the use of multiple cores to individually solve individual parts of the moment matrix, at each frequency. In other words, one frequency point is computed at a time, with the solution matrix distributed across the various processor cores in independent processes called "computing threads." When completed, the results of each thread are quickly and efficiently combined.
New EM Analysis Engines
Two new versions of Sonnet’s EM analysis engine, em™ are introduced:
Sonnet Desktop Solver (DST) Engine
The Sonnet Desktop Solver Engine utilizes 2 cores in parallel
The Sonnet Desktop Solver engine is aimed at typical engineering desktop PCs, and utilizes 2 cores in parallel for analysis time reduction.
Most design organizations today use single-CPU workstations for desktop work, while concentrating their hardware budget on back-end shared computing resources. For desktop work, it is usually desirable to maintain an additional 1 or 2 cores for personal work while intensive EM analysis processing is running. The DTS solver balances the need for ongoing productive work on a quad-core desktop top, and provides a price advantage over the High Performance Solver Engine.
The most intensive phase of EM analysis is in the matrix solution phase. Sonnet's multi-core efficiency is such that this process is on the order of 1.9x faster than a single thread solution--nearly 90% efficient! Our benchmarks show that performance improvements of up to 30x over the previous release are possible with the DTS engine and our enhanced meshing engine. [See Version 12 performance benchmarks.]
Sonnet High Performance Solver (HPS) Engine
The Sonnet High Performance Solver engine is aimed at high-end workstations with dual quad-core CPUs, and uses up to 8 cores for 8-way parallel processing within a single frequency. Matrix solve using the HPS Engine on an 8-core processor is nearly 7x faster than a single thread analysis.
The Sonnet High Performance Solver Engine uses up to 8 cores in parallel
The HPS Engine is ideally suited to high-performance Remote EM processing systems, providing a shared high computing resource to your engineering team.
Combined with our enhanced meshing algorithm, the new Sonnet analysis engines provide analysis speed improvement by as much as 50x or faster than the previous release. [See Version 12 performance benchmarks.]
The multi-threaded Desktop and High Performance Solvers are part of Sonnet Professional Versions only. Single thread solvers are used in Sonnet Lite, LitePlus, Level2 and Level3 Suites.
High Performance emClusters
The Desktop Solver and High Performance Solver may be employed in a computing cluster using the Sonnet emCluster product. With emCluster, a goup of N high-end computing platforms may harnessed to provide up to an additional N-fold simulation time improvement. Combining the emCluster product with 10 High Performance Solvers can yield performance improvements of up to 500x over the previous release.
*Multi-Threaded EM Engine not supported on Sun Solaris