Platform: Macintosh Versions: 6.0

Description

Please note This entry concerns COMSOL 6.0 for COMSOL 6.1, please see Knowledge Base 1300

Limitations

  • LiveLink for MATLAB and LiveLink for Simulink are not supported.
  • COMSOL Model Manager Server is not supported.
  • The PARDISO solver is not supported. COMSOL will automatically switch to the MUMPS solver when PARDISO is to be used.
  • Using CAD Import Module requires Rosetta.

Known issues

  • Virtual memory usage is not properly reported.

Performance issues

  • Some models may perform poorly when MUMPS is used as the solver instead of PARDISO. The solution is to use the Intel version of COMSOL through Rosetta.
  • 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 6.0), 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.
  • 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.
  • MUMPS may underperform for some models. This will be corrected in a future update or release.

Best practices

  • For unsupported features (listed above) use the Intel version of COMSOL with Rosetta.
  • Test if your model performs better with the Intel version of COMSOL especially if PARDISO is to be used.
  • Generally, install both the native (M1) and Intel versions of COMSOL and use the version that suits you best.