CFD Direct

The Architects of OpenFOAM

CFDDFC® v11 Released

CFD Direct announces the release of version 11 of CFD Direct From the Cloud™ (CFDDFC®). CFDDFC is a cloud platform for CFD running OpenFOAM and supporting software. It available as a pay-as-you-go images for Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace in three flavours:

  • “Standard” CFDDFC (x86), with secure remote desktop to a full graphical environment with ParaView visualization and FreeCAD.
  • Web CFDDFC (x86), with secure remote desktop via a browser to the same graphical environment as above.
  • CFDDFC (Arm) for batch running at a lower on-demand cost.

“Standard” CFDDFC

“Standard” CFDDFC is the marketplace product for the instance types based on x86 processors from Intel and AMD. Their latest generation of compute instances are C7i and C6a, respectively, with the largest instance types, c7i.48xlarge and c6a.48xlarge, providing 96 physical cores in a single instance. CFDDFC provides a full desktop environment with graphical applications, accessible using the X2Go remote desktop (see below), including:

Web CFDDFC

Web CFDDFC is the marketplace product for the same x86 instance types described above. It includes the same software and configuration as “standard” CFDDFC above, but runs on the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS GNU/Linux operating system. It provides a full desktop environment with graphical applications, accessible through a web browser, as shown below.

CFDDFC (Arm)

CFDDFC (Arm) is the marketplace product for instances using processors with Arm architecture, including the C7g and C6g instances with the Graviton processor. CFDDFC (Arm) is a server-only distribution without remote desktop and graphical applications. CFDDFC (Arm) includes:

Run OpenFOAM in the Cloud with CFDDFC®

Standard and Web CFDDFC includes the remote desktop (above)

Run CFDDFC

Instance Types

EC2 includes Compute Optimized and HPC-Optimised instances for computationally intensive workloads. The latest generation of instances, C7i, C6a, HPC6a, C7g and HPC7g, provide the best performance available today. They support Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) as standard which provides high throughput, low latency networking required for running a cluster of instances effectively. They also support Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA), an additional network interface for cluster HPC applications running on the largest instance type in the family.

The CFDDFC command line interface lists the available instances according to number of physical cores ‘#C‘. The Compute- and HPC-Optimized instances are listed below.

#C : Instances
1 : c6in.large c6i.large c6a.large c6gn.medium c6g.medium c7i.large c7gn.medium c7g.medium c5n.large
    c5a.large c5.large
2 : c6in.xlarge c6i.xlarge c6a.xlarge c6gn.large c6g.large c7i.xlarge c7gn.large c7g.large
    c5n.xlarge c5a.xlarge c5.xlarge
4 : c6in.2xlarge c6i.2xlarge c6a.2xlarge c6gn.xlarge c6g.xlarge c7i.2xlarge c7gn.xlarge c7g.xlarge
    c5n.2xlarge c5a.2xlarge c5.2xlarge
8 : c6in.4xlarge c6i.4xlarge c6a.4xlarge c6gn.2xlarge c6g.2xlarge c7i.4xlarge c7gn.2xlarge
    c7g.2xlarge c5n.4xlarge c5a.4xlarge c5.4xlarge
16 : c6in.8xlarge c6i.8xlarge c6a.8xlarge c6gn.4xlarge c6g.4xlarge c7i.8xlarge c7gn.4xlarge
     c7g.4xlarge c5a.8xlarge hpc7g.4xlarge
18 : c5n.9xlarge c5.9xlarge
24 : c6in.12xlarge c6i.12xlarge c6a.12xlarge c7i.12xlarge c5a.12xlarge c5.12xlarge
32 : c6in.16xlarge c6i.16xlarge c6a.16xlarge c6gn.8xlarge c6g.8xlarge c7i.16xlarge c7gn.8xlarge
     c7g.8xlarge c5a.16xlarge hpc7g.8xlarge
36 : c5n.18xlarge c5.18xlarge
48 : c6in.24xlarge c6i.24xlarge c6a.24xlarge c6gn.12xlarge c6g.12xlarge c7i.24xlarge c7gn.12xlarge
     c7g.12xlarge c5a.24xlarge c5.24xlarge
64 : c6in.32xlarge c6i.32xlarge c6a.32xlarge c6gn.16xlarge c6g.16xlarge c7gn.16xlarge c7g.16xlarge
     hpc7g.16xlarge
96 : c6a.48xlarge c7i.48xlarge hpc6a.48xlarge

The table below shows the availability of instance families in different regions:

Region          c5    c5a   c5n   c6a   c6g   c6gn  c6i   c6in  c7g   c7gn  c7i   hpc6a hpc7g
us-west-2       X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X
us-west-1       X     X     X     X     X     X     X
us-east-2       X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X
us-east-1       X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X           X
sa-east-1       X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X
me-south-1      X     X     X           X     X     X     X
me-central-1    X                       X                 X
il-central-1    X                       X     X     X
eu-west-3       X     X     X           X     X     X     X
eu-west-2       X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X
eu-west-1       X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X           X
eu-south-2      X                       X                       X           X
eu-south-1      X     X     X           X     X     X     X
eu-north-1      X     X     X           X     X     X     X                 X     X
eu-central-2    X                       X                 X
eu-central-1    X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X
ca-central-1    X     X     X           X     X     X     X
ap-southeast-4  X                       X
ap-southeast-3  X           X           X                 X
ap-southeast-2  X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X
ap-southeast-1  X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X                 X
ap-south-2      X                       X           X
ap-south-1      X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X
ap-northeast-3  X           X           X     X     X
ap-northeast-2  X     X     X           X     X     X
ap-northeast-1  X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X     X                       X
ap-east-1       X     X     X           X     X     X
af-south-1      X     X     X                       X     X
CFDDFC® v11 Released