Visualizing Multi-Die Design: Ansys and NVIDIA’s Omniverse Collaboration

In a DACtv session on July 22, 2024, Rich Goldman from Ansys discussed the partnership with NVIDIA, focusing on accelerating engineering simulations and visualizing 3D IC designs in Omniverse. The collaboration, outlined in six pillars defined by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, leverages NVIDIA’s GPUs and Grace CPUs to enhance Ansys tools, while Ansys supports NVIDIA’s GPU development.

The first pillar accelerates Ansys solvers on NVIDIA GPUs. For instance, Ansys HFSS, a high-frequency electromagnetic simulator, runs 6-10x faster on NVIDIA A100 GPUs, enabling complex antenna array simulations in minutes instead of days. Ansys LS-DYNA for crash simulations achieves 6x speedup on A100s, and Fluent CFD solver sees up to 5x gains with multi-GPU scaling. A remarkable example is Ansys Discovery, where GPU-accelerated live physics reduces simulation time from 10 minutes to 1 second—a 600x speedup—facilitating real-time design exploration.

NVIDIA relies on Ansys for its GPU designs. Ansys RedHawk-SC and Totem-SC handle power integrity for massive chips like the GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip, analyzing 144 billion elements. PathFinder-SC ensures electrostatic discharge protection, and HFSS simulates high-speed SerDes at 224 Gbps. This mutual dependency underscores the partnership’s depth.

The session emphasized 3D IC visualization in Omniverse, NVIDIA’s platform for collaborative 3D workflows. Multi-die systems pose challenges like thermal management, signal integrity, and mechanical stress. Ansys integrates tools like RedHawk-SC Electrothermal with Omniverse via Universal Scene Description (USD), enabling immersive visualization. Engineers can explore chip internals in VR, identifying issues like hotspots or warpage that 2D views miss. A demo showed a 3D IC with HBM stacks, revealing thermal gradients and EM hotspots interactively.

Omniverse’s collaborative features allow global teams to work in a shared virtual space, reducing miscommunication. It supports digital twins for full-system simulation, from chip to data center. Goldman highlighted how this visualization aids in comprehending complex interactions in heterogeneous integration, crucial as Moore’s Law evolves toward 3D stacking.

Another pillar involves NVIDIA Modulus, a physics-informed neural network framework. Ansys integrates it for surrogate modeling, accelerating simulations. For example, training on Ansys data creates models that predict outcomes 100,000x faster, ideal for optimization loops. This AI augmentation enhances design efficiency without sacrificing accuracy.

Finally, the NVIDIA 6G Research Cloud was introduced, an AI-accelerated platform for radio access network (RAN) development. It combines Omniverse for digital twins, Sionna for channel simulation, and Aerial for software-defined RAN. Researchers can simulate massive MIMO systems at city scale, advancing 6G technologies like AI-native air interfaces.

Videos featuring Jensen Huang reinforced the vision. In one, Huang announced partnerships to CUDA-accelerate ecosystems, including Ansys, for digital twins and generative AI infrastructure. Another emphasized simulating entire products digitally to drive down computing costs and enable breakthroughs.

This collaboration positions Ansys and NVIDIA at the forefront of multi-die design, addressing AI-era demands for speed, scale, and sustainability. By visualizing and simulating complex systems in Omniverse, engineers gain unprecedented insights, accelerating innovation in semiconductors and beyond.

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