Load balancing (LSF)

Hi altogether,

can you recommend an easy to setup and open source LSF software that works
(integrates?) with cadence ?

Regards,

Stefan

 

Well, "LSF" is a commercial tool "Load Sharing Facility" from Platform
Computing. But I am expecting you really mean some load balancing tool.

You can either use the very simple "LBS" system that comes with Cadence (see the
<instdir>/distproc/distproc.pdf document), or I've also used SGE (Sun Grid
Engine) from Sun Microsystems. See:

http://www.sun.com/software/gridware/

http://gridengine.sunsource.net/

I've written some solutions on this for sourcelink - for example:

http://sourcelink.cadence.com/docs/db/kdb/2004/Mar/11015590.html

This explains how to use SGE with IC5141. In IC610, there's native support for
it via LBS, rather like there is for LSF. In IC5141, SGE can also be used using
the "command line mode" of LBS (see the distproc document I mentioned earlier).

Regards,

Andrew.

 

Is it possible to send a copy of the articles to me? I would like to
take a look... and may be we can provide the link(s) on the Grid
Engine HOWTOs page: http://gridengine.sunsource.net/howto/howto.html

There are a lot of EDA users on the SGE mailing list, and a few years
ago we have put up the HOWTO for ModelSim users: "Using Mentor
ModelSim and Mentor JobSpy"

Rayson

 

*Solution_No: 11015590
*Title: Can I run distributed jobs in Analog Design Environment
using Sun Grid Engine?

*Problem:

You would like to use SGE (Sun Grid Engine) with the Distributed Simulation
option in the Analog Design Environment, but currently it only supports
Cadence LBS and Platform Computing's LSF.

Is it possible?

*Solution:

There is an enhancement request, PCR 606447 asking for Sun Grid Engine
(also known as Gridware) support. Also, PCR 560338 is requesting
the ability to specify a SGE/LSF command to use for submitting
jobs.

In the meantime, it is possible to implement something which allows SGE
to take care of the queueing and balancing. Here's how.

First of all, create a script, somewhere in your UNIX path, called
"spectre_sge". This should look something like this:

#!/bin/sh
#
# Group Custom IC, Cadence Design Systems Ltd
# Machine SUN
# Date Jan 13, 2004
#
# Invoke spectre via SGE. -V means keep environment, -cwd means
# keep current working directory. -now no means that qrsh will queue
# if there aren't any free slots. Adjust the arguments to reflect your
# SGE setup
#

exec qrsh -V -cwd -now no spectre "$@"

If you like, you can just do the following in DFII:

envSetVal("spectre.envOpts" "controlMode" 'string "batch")
envSetVal("spectre.envOpts" "simExecName" 'string "spectre_sge")

and then start an ADE session, keeping the simulator local. If you do
this, it will actually run the spectre_sge script, and run via SGE.
However, this doesn't then give you the ability to be able to background
the jobs or spread around the network when using parametric analysis or
monte-carlo.

So, to make it available via the distributed simulation system, the idea
is to submit the jobs to Cadence's LBS, which in turn passes them on to
SGE. The LBS jobs can all be run on a single machine (which doesn't
have to be high powered, because all it is doing is submitting the
jobs via SGE, and not running the applications themselves).

Create a config file for LBS:

sgequeue 1
mysubmithost 50

Then start (on mysubmithost, say) the LBS queue manager:

cdsqmgr /path/to/the/config/file

Finally set the environment variable (in everyone's login):

setenv LBS_CLUSTER_MASTER mysubmithost

(the machine which you're running cdsqmgr on).

Next you can start DFII, and then set:

envSetVal("spectre.envOpts" "simExecName" 'string "spectre_sge")

Start up the Analog Design Environment, and choose
Setup->Simulator/Directory/Host and choose Host Mode as "distributed".
Choose Auto Job Submit if you want, and E-Mail notify if you want.

Now any jobs you submit will be sent to LBS, which will in turn send
them to SGE. You can monitor the jobs using either SGE's "qmon" command,
or using Tools->Job Monitor. Bear in mind that using the Job Monitor
will show all jobs as running on the sgesubmithost, and jobs will appear to
have started as soon as LBS submits them to SGE - SGE may not necessarily
run them straightaway.

It's probably a good idea to have at least as many slots in the LBS queue
as you have slots in SGE. I just created plenty (50) to illustrate how
to do this.