Benefits of Running COMSOL in a Distributed Mode

The following direct solvers are supported by COMSOL Multiphysics when running in distributed mode:

•

MUMPS

•

SPOOLES

PARDISO is not supported in distributed mode. MUMPS is used instead.

The following iterative solvers are supported:

•	Iterative solvers: BiCGStab, CG, GMRES, and FGMRES

•	Smoothers and preconditioners: SOR, SOR Gauge, SOR Line, SOR Vector, SCGS, and Vanka

•	Geometric multigrid

•	Domain decomposition

All nonlinear or segregated stationary, time-dependent, parametric, eigenvalue, and optimization solvers run in parallel in the distributed mode. Assembling is also performed in parallel in distributed mode. In addition, the orthonormal null-space function runs in parallel in the distributed mode. An additional benefit is that the memory usage per node is lower than when COMSOL Multiphysics is run in nondistributed mode. Therefore, if you run COMSOL Multiphysics in distributed mode on a cluster distributed over several computer nodes, you can solve a larger problem compared to when you run in nondistributed mode.

COMSOL Multiphysics can also run parameter sweeps using the distributed mode. The simplest way to start a distributed parameter sweep is to select the Distribute parametric sweep check box in the Settings window for Cluster Computing in the Cluster Settings section. The simplest way to modify an existing model is to add the Cluster Computing study and select Compute in the study node’s Settings window. When running a parameter sweep in distributed mode, the memory usage is still limited by the memory size of a single computer node. Because the problems are solved in parallel, you will solve for all parameter values faster compared to solving on a single computer node. If you want to combine the benefits from distributed parameter sweeps and the distributed solvers, it is possible to run in a hybrid mode where you can limit the maximum number of groups to distributed the sweep over. This setting is only available in the Parametric node in the solver under Solver Configurations and the Parametric Sweep node in the Job Configurations branch. Use the Show Default Solver command to access this setting.