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With NUMA, processors can access its local memory faster than non-local memory.  Use of NUMA is usually activated in the BIOS when the workstation boots. For SMP version of ANSYS, using NUMA does not have any noticeable impact.  On the other hand, using NUMA correctly can help speed up Distributed ANSYS (DANSYS) since there are […]

When using GPU Accelerator on Linux, the first step is to replace the Nouveau driver (which is often included by default on many Linux distributions) with the NVIDIA driver.  NVIDIA provides detailed instructions on how to accomplish this, although the basic idea is to change the runlevel to 3 (so as not to use the […]

If you are using Linux and use IBus for input of other languages, you may notice that when using Mechanical APDL, you cannot enter APDL commands in the “Command Prompt”. If this is the case, unset the environment variable XMODIFIERS (e.g, “unset XMODIFIERS”) prior to running Mechanical APDL, and you should be able to type […]

In Workbench Mechanical 14.5, the results file in Random Vibration (PSD) analyses has become significantly smaller due to two reasons: In 14.5, the results file format keeps DOF solution and reaction forces in double precision but stress, strain and other element results in single precision.  This can often lead to a file size reduction of […]

There are many tutorials out there for using ZFS tools zpool and zfs, so I’ll just summarize some points below. Instead of partitioning a disk to several filesystems, in ZFS, there is a concept of a “storage pool” of devices, where filesystems are created in that pool.  Consequently, zpool is used to manage the storage […]

I’ve been a big fan of Dropbox for a while, and I use it to share pictures and video with family.  What is nice is being able to sync files in the background on a folder, so we can send each other updated files automatically without having to notify each other. Recently, though, I’ve started […]

Google Authenticator provides 2-step verification for Gmail.  When on travel and using other computers, it provides a little extra layer of security for paranoid individuals such as myself. A verification code on my Android phone (also works with iPhone or BlackBerry smartphones) is needed in addition to my password to login, so unless someone has […]

On 64-bit Windows when compiling a custom executable in ANSYS 13.0, an error regarding “freeMatrixOnGPU” may occur while linking.  If this occurs, edit the “ansysex.def” file with a text editor and remove the line “freeMatrixOnGPU” to get the linking process to complete successfully.