Description

Please note This entry concerns COMSOL 6.2. For COMSOL 6.3, see Knowledge Base 1321. For COMSOL 6.1, please see Knowledge Base 1300

System Requirements

  • COMSOL 6.2 for macOS Intel can not be used under Rosetta on Apple Silicon computers.
  • For the CAD Import Module and the Design Module, file import of the IGES and STEP, file formats requires Rosetta 2.

Notes on Performance

  • For optimal performance COMSOL uses only the performance cores of the Apple SoC. Because of this it may appear that COMSOL is not using all CPU resources.
  • For newer Apple silicon SoCs (released after COMSOL 6.2), setting the number of performance cores may have to be done manually from Settings → Multicore and Cluster Computing. Otherwise, COMSOL may end up being allocated to efficiency cores instead of performance cores resulting in poor performance. If you are using COMSOL Multiphysics 6.2 Update 3 (Build number 6.2.0.415) or later versions, this will be handled automatically.
  • Poor performance can be caused by setting COMSOL as a low priority process. This can happen, for example, when launching COMSOL from Cron or Launchd, or by enabling very conservative power saving settings in macOS.
  • For most models, running COMSOL with the BLAS library ArmPL rather than the default vecLib library can lead to significant performance improvements. To use ArmPL, append -blas armpl to your COMSOL Start command. With the release of Update 2 for COMSOL Multiphysics 6.2, the ArmPL BLAS library is now used by default on macOS Apple Silicon computers.

Known Issues

  • Virtual memory usage is not properly reported.
  • External MATLAB® Function calls are not supported.
  • The PARDISO solver is not supported, so when PARDISO is selected COMSOL will automatically switch to the MUMPS solver with settings selected to emulate PARDISO. Fo