Starting with 2021 R2 on Windows, Lumerical is not bundled with Intel MPI v2019. These guidelines are for setting the resource configuration when running parallel jobs across several computers using this version of Intel MPI while obtaining the license from the Ansys License Manager.
Requisites
- Configure your machines or node for remote/parallel jobs as shown here.
- Register your user credentials with Intel MPI on the Windows machine where you will be launching the simulation.
- Store the simulation file in a shared network folder where you have write/read access.
Distribute a simulation job on multiple computers
- Create a machine file that contains the hostname/IP of the machines that will be running the simulation.
- Suffix the number of processes to use for each remote host separated by a colon ":".
- Do not add empty lines before or after your "host" lines.
- Save the machine file as a text file. e.g. "myhosts.txt".
- If running with the local computer, "localhost" should be first on the list in the machine file.
- The machine file will look like this:
localhost:4
remotehost1:4
...
lastremotehost:8
- Label or change the entries of your resource to indicate that the resource is distributing the simulation remotely on multiple machines.
- Enter the hostname/IP of the machines running the job.
- This information is used when doing the "Run Tests" feature.
- Edit your resource and select "Remote: Intel MPI" as the Job launching preset.
- Check "no default options".
- Add a writable path for the APPDATA variable as shown here.
- Add the "-machine <filename>" option.
- Save your settings and run your simulation.
Note: If the local computer will not be running the simulation in distributed mode, ensure that the "hosts" file of each remote Windows computer has the IP and Hostname of the "local computer" where you are running the simulation from.
Run sweeps in parallel on several computers
- Add the resource for the remote machine in your resource configuration.
- Enter the hostname or IP address of the remote machine running the simulation and the corresponding processes and capacity to use. See this article for details.
- Edit the remote resource and select "Remote: Intel MPI" as the job launching preset.
- Add a writable path for the APPDATA variable as shown here.
- Save your settings and run your simulation.
See also
How to run simulations with Intel MPI on Windows
Running simulations remotely with MPI
Lumerical solve, accelerator, and Ansys HPC license consumption