Specific license for HW 11/12 to run optistruct on several cores of 1 CPU ?

Rahul_P1
Rahul_P1
Altair Employee
edited October 2020 in Community Q&A

Does one need a specific license of HyperWorks 11 (and soon HW 12 image/emoticons/default_biggrin.png' alt=':D' srcset='/emoticons/biggrin@2x.png 2x' width='20' height='20'>) to run optistruct on all cores of a multi-core CPU? Is there any limitation? Same questions for other solvers of HyperWorks Suite (always HW 11, and 12 for the future)

Thank you.
Kind Regards,
Marc

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Answers

  • Rahul_P1
    Rahul_P1
    Altair Employee
    edited September 2014

    Hi Marc,

    You do not need a special license to run Optistruct on multiple cores however you do need a License with enough tokens if you are using a server license.

    You can run HyperWorks using a standalone license or a server license. It is primarily necessary to have a license file with the Solver feature in both cases.

    A standalone license (with the solver features) can be used on only one machine, the license is node locked to that machine. With such a license you can run multicore runs without any changes.

    If you have a server license, then it is a license generated for one machine which will serve licenses to be used by many machines all connected by a network, this license will have a specific number of tokens, called HyperWorks Units or HWUs.

    Please see http://www.altairhyperworks.com/hwhelp/Altair/hw11.0/help/hw/hw.htm?gridworks_licensing.htm for details on units drawn by application, in summary-

    For multiple CPU-core jobs, the number of base HWUs drawn by RADIOSS, AcuSolve and OptiStruct depends on the number of machine CPU-cores used per run as described in the following table. This base number may be altered depending on how many simultaneous copies of these solvers are running. See below regarding the Decay Function.

    f65wi-1.PNG

    A decay function is applied across all RadiossA, RadiossB, AcuSolve, AcuTrace, AcuView and OptiStruct licenses running simultaneously off the same license server. The decay function is a multiplier on the unit amount drawn for a job. Once a job has finished, the next job will backfill into the vacated slot. Hence, once a job has started, the checked-out unit amount for that job will not change.

    7o320-2.PNG

    Solvers level or stack HWUs according to the following rules:

    • At the first invoke of a Solver application, the HWUs will level against HyperWorks applications already running on the same machine.
    • Similarly, at the first invoke of a different Solver application, the HWUs still level.
    • The HWUs stack when starting the second and so forth invoke of the same batch application.
    • When the leveled job finishes, the next invoke levels again.

    For example, if you launch HyperMesh first (21 HWU), and then launch RADIOSS (25 HWU), 25 HWU will be drawn. If on the same machine (with the same user id also) you add an OptiStruct job (50 HWU), the total units drawn is 45 HWU. If you now add a second OptiStruct job, the total units drawn will be increased to 90 HWU (45+0.9*50 HWU).

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