Efficiency in Combustion, Efficiency in Computation - A Match Made in GPU Heaven

There are few things that get me more excited (at work) than an awesome CFD solution. And as a frugal engineer, I'm all about being efficient. Here's a CFD simulation that doubles down on efficiency.

NASA E3

In the early 1980s, NASA's Energy Efficient Engine (E3) combustor effort was all about meeting performance goals while also achieving emissions standards for turbofan engines. The E3 was designed, built, tested, and shown to achieve the desired results. It was efficient. You can read more about the E3 in this NASA contractor report.

E3 Combustor cross-section. Figure 1 from the NASA CR cited above. [I wanted to show photographs of the test article, but the scans are of poor quality.]

CFD Simulation of the E3

A lot has changed in the CFD world since the early 1980s. Today we have software like CharLES from Cadence's recent acquisition of Cascade Technologies that can accurately compute a transient flowfield with combustion and large eddy simulation of turbulence. Check out this video of the solution, and be mesmerized.

High-Performance GPU Computing for High-Fidelity CFD

If we are computing the flow in a combustor that's designed to achieve new levels of efficiency, there's no reason our computations shouldn't also be efficient. CharLES is a GPU-native flow solver, and the investment in rearchitecting the software for GPUs is key to achieving 9X throughput for the same cost or 9X lower cost for the same throughput—nearly an order of magnitude improvement in efficiency.

Slide from NVIDIA GTC keynote presentation on 21 Mar 2023.

Don't Take My Word for It

It was none other than NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang who shared the news about the performance of Cadence's CharLES flow solver in his keynote at the NVIDIA GTC event on 21 Mar 2023. You can watch Jensen's entire keynote, but I've set the YouTube video to the precise starting point.

Screen capture from the recording of NVIDIA's CEO's keynote presentation at the 2023 GTC.

Want to Learn More?

If keynote-worthy GPU performance for LES CFD with combustion is of interest to you, I invite you to learn more by completing this brief form on our website to request an introduction to this technology. Where the form asks "Please provide details on your request," write that you want to learn more about CharLES as mentioned at NVIDIA GTC.