Lumerical License Allocation with Parallel (Concurrent) Jobs

[williamfraser3]

I am a little unclear on how the licensing works for running concurrent jobs in FDTD. If I run 4 jobs concurrently on localhost using addjob and runjobs with "Capacity" set to 4 in the resource manager, is this equivalent to running a single job in terms of licensing because it is all on one machine? Or would this "occupy" 4 licenses? 

For context, I am part of a research group with a limited number of licenses. Basically, I want to know if I run multiple jobs in parallel, will I be blocking other members of the group from using FDTD?

[Lito Yap]

@williamfraser3, 

1x Lumerical FDTD license comes with 1 GUI + 1 solve licenses. The solve license allows running a single (1) simulation file up to a maximum of 32 CPU cores or 16 GPU SMs. KB >>  List of licensed features by product – Ansys Optics  

When you are running the Lumerical FDTD CAD/GUI - this will be using 1 FDTD GUI license. At the time that you are running a simulation or concurrent sweeps on the local machine, this will utilize 1 FDTD solve license if the total number of cores used to run the simulation/concurrent sweeps is not more than 32 cores/threads. KB >> Ansys optics solve, accelerator, and Ansys HPC license consumption – Ansys Optics 

Example: Running 4 concurrent simulations/sweeps on the local computer/localhost, using the Resource configuration below: 

processes=8, threads=1, and capacity=4 (8x1x4=32) 

will checkout/use 1 FDTD solve license. See KB >> Resource configuration elements and controls – Ansys Optics 

 

[williamfraser3]

 

Hi Lito,

Thank you for the clear reply. This makes more sense now. I think I was getting confused mixing up the limits for Standard licenses versus entreprise licenses.

What does it mean if the "Processes" box is set to 1 and greyed out?

 

[Lito Yap]

When the processes is disabled, this indicates that the simulation will be running on a single process or without MPI. This occurs when the Job Launching preset is set to "Local Computer" or the solver only runs on a single process. See KB >> Resource configuration for Lumerical solvers running with a single process – Ansys Optics 

[williamfraser3]

Okay I see. I originally ignored that article because it says it is not for FDTD. But I guess for my specific configuration it applies to FDTD as well.

Thank you!

[Lito Yap]

If the processes is disabled in FDTD, check the 'Job launching preset' - make sure that this is set to 'Remote: Microsoft MPI' or 'Remote: Intel MPI' (Windows).  

In Linux, the default is 'Local Computer' since we do not bundle any MPI starting with Lumerical 2024 R1 release. See KB >> Running simulations with MPI on Linux – Ansys Optics.