ANSYS HPC for Academia

High-Performance Computing

High-performance computing (HPC) is an important consideration for academia. Complex research projects often involve simulating large assemblies, or even entire systems, which demand considerable computational resources when rapid results are required. The widespread availability of multicore processors, even in laptops, allows for impressive performance gains for medium- to large-numerical problem sizes. The ANSYS Academic products meet these HPC requirements by providing two levels of HPC:

  • Built-in HPC: For Teaching, Research and Associate licenses HPC capability is built into each task of the Academic base licenses. For most physics solvers, this is both shared and distributed memory HPC capability for up to 16 cores, plus GPU access is enabled for ANSYS Mechanical, Fluent and electronics solvers.
  • Add-on HPC: For Research and Associate licenses, the built-in HPC capability can be extended by purchasing additional ANSYS Academic HPC licenses. For most physics solvers, the shared and distributed memory HPC and GPU capability can be extended.

The ANSYS Academic solvers support the same HPC methods provided by our commercial HPC products. For example, if the ANSYS Academic product contains ANSYS HFSS, then the HPC methods available to the Academic HFSS product user are the same as that for the commercial solution. It is also important to note that the type of HPC available varies by solver and physics type, and not all solvers support all HPC methods. Please see the following PDF brochure and web page for more specific details of solver support for HPC:

All the ANSYS Academic Products that bundle solvers that support HPC have 16 HPC tasks built in. These 16 HPC tasks can be used for either a CPU core or a GPU card/slot. This means that up to 16 CPU cores, or alternatively up to 8 GPU cards, can be used to accelerate simulation solution times.

Structural, Thermal and Fluids Academic Products

  • Built-in HPC capability is allocated/restricted to each task. For example, for a 25-task license of ANSYS Academic Research, each user/task can access up to 16 cores, with a maximum of 16 cores available per solution.
  • Shared memory (SMP), distributed memory parallel (DMP) and domain decomposition methods are included.
  • GPU access is enabled for ANSYS Mechanical Enterprise (using the ANSYS Mechanical solver) and ANSYS Fluent solvers. Each of the 16 built-in HPC tasks can be used for one GPU card/slot, meaning that up to 16 GPU cards/slots can be accessed per academic product license. Note that we do not restrict the number of GPU cores per GPU card/slot.
  • Frequency Sweep VT and VT Accelerator is built-in and available for the ANSYS Mechanical solver. This is a legacy HPC frequency sweep solution that has been largely replaced by ANSYS DesignXplorer and Design Point Updates.
  • The following structural, thermal and fluids solvers support HPC:
    • ANSYS CFX (SMP, DMP)
    • ANSYS Fluent (SMP, DMP)
    • ANSYS Mechanical solver (SMP, DMP, Domain Decomposition)
    • ANSYS Autodyn (SMP, DMP)
    • ANSYS Polyflow (SMP, DMP)
    • ANSYS Icepak (SMP, DMP)

Electronics Academic Products

  • Built-in HPC capability is not allocated/restricted to each task. For example, for a 25-task license of ANSYS Academic Research HF, 400 HPC tasks are built-in, so a single user can use all 400 HPC tasks, or alternatively 25 users can each use 16 cores per solution.
  • A legacy shared memory (SMP) multiprocessor capability is enabled to make use of any number of SMP cores, but does not scale well beyond 16 cores. It has been largely superseded by other HPC methods.
  • Distributed memory parallel (DMP) and domain decomposition methods are included.
  • GPU access is enabled.
  • The following electromagnetics solvers support HPC:
    • ANSYS HFSS (SMP, Domain decomposition, Distributed frequency sweep)
    • ANSYS Maxwell (SMP, Distributed frequency sweep)
    • ANSYS Designer (SMP, Distributed frequency sweep)
    • ANSYS Q3D (SMP, DMP)
    • ANSYS SIwave (SMP)
    • ANSYS TPA (MP, Distributed PKG analysis)
  • The Academic ANSYS Redhawk and ANSYS PowerArtist products do not use HPC at this time.

All ANSYS Academic Research and ANSYS Academic Associate products can extend their built-in HPC capability with add-on HPC licenses. ANSYS Academic Teaching products may not extend their built-in HPC capability. There are four types of add-on HPC product licenses:

Add-on Academic HPC Product
(per core & workgroup)

Extends the built-in HPC of the following base product(s)

ANSYS Academic Associate HPC

ANSYS Academic Associate

ANSYS Academic Associate CFD


ANSYS Academic Research HPC

ANSYS Academic Research

ANSYS Academic Research CFD

ANSYS Academic Research Mechanical

ANSYS Academic Research Autodyn

ANSYS Academic Associate Electronics HPC

ANSYS Academic Associate EM

ANSYS Academic Associate HF

ANSYS Academic Research Electronics HPC

ANSYS Academic Research EM

ANSYS Academic Research HF

One task of ANSYS Academic Research/Associate HPC extends the base HPC ability of any one of the solvers that supports HPC contained in the base product (see built-in HPC section for more details of which HPC methods are available for each solver). Each task adds another core.

Both SMP, DMP and domain decomposition methods are extended to additional cores by the add-on HPC academic products. Please see the built-in HPC section above for specifics about which bundled solvers support which type of HPC.

For the structural, thermal and fluids academic products, the add-on HPC licenses can be used to extend the GPU capability provided by the built-in HPC tasks. Each add-on HPC license (task) can be used to access either a CPU core or a GPU card/slot.

Category & Product Name Has Built in HPC? Can use add-on Academic HPC licenses? Can use add-on Academic Electronics HPC licenses? 
Academic Multiphysics Campus Solutions  
ANSYS Academic Multiphysics Campus Solution YES YES YES
Academic Associate  
Mechanical and Fluids      
ANSYS Academic Associate Mechanical and CFD YES YES N/A
ANSYS Academic Associate CFD YES YES N/A
Electronics      
ANSYS Academic Associate Electronics Suite YES N/A YES
ANSYS Academic Associate HF YES N/A YES
ANSYS Academic Associate EM YES N/A YES
ANSYS Academic Associate RedHawk NO N/A NO
ANSYS Academic Associate PowerArtist NO N/A NO
Academic Research  
Mechanical and Fluids      
ANSYS Academic Research Mechanical and CFD YES YES N/A
ANSYS Academic Research Mechanical YES YES N/A
ANSYS Academic Research CFD YES YES N/A
ANSYS Academic Research LS-DYNA NO NO1 N/A
Electronics      
ANSYS Academic Research Electronics Suite YES N/A YES
ANSYS Academic Research HF YES N/A YES
ANSYS Academic Research EM YES N/A YES
ANSYS Academic Research RedHawk NO N/A NO
ANSYS Academic Research PowerArtist NO N/A NO
Academic Teaching1  
Mechanical and Fluids      
ANSYS Academic Teaching Mechanical and CFD YES NO N/A
ANSYS Academic Teaching Mechanical YES NO N/A
ANSYS Academic Teaching CFD YES NO N/A
Electronics      
ANSYS Academic Teaching Electronics Suite YES N/A NO
ANSYS Academic Teaching HF YES N/A NO
ANSYS Academic Teaching EM YES N/A NO
ANSYS Academic Teaching RedHawk NO N/A NO
ANSYS Academic Teaching PowerArtist NO N/A NO
Academic Toolbox  
ANSYS Academic Pre-Processing Tools NO N/A N/A
ANSYS Academic EKM Shared NO N/A N/A

Table Notes:

1. ANSYS Academic Research LS-DYNA can add HPC capability with the ANSYS Academic Research LS-DYNA HPC product.