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using pc's in network as solver slaves

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Hi there,

is it possible to use unused computational power in the network (office PCs: Intel E2180 with 2GB RAM)? I'm thinking of having one high perfomance workstation, which gives some small jobs to other PCs. I estimate that there are about 20 PCs in our working group, which are not really busy all the time (especially over night :) )

Is this an already discussed topic? I didn't found some facts about this using COMSOL.


thanks in advance!
Kai

3 Replies Last Post 2010年7月7日 GMT-4 11:06

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Posted: 1 decade ago 2010年7月7日 GMT-4 08:09
too good to be true :'(
too good to be true :'(

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Posted: 1 decade ago 2010年7月7日 GMT-4 09:20
Yep

But using "slaves" is common use for rendering (stupid) pictures (Cinebench4D or stuff like that)! So it should be possible for FE-Analysis too. At least COMSOL is optimized (it should be) for parallel computing. So there should be a way to create small jobs ... Concerning the SETI-Project they found a way :)

I think this would be a great improvement of COMSOL. Just consider the amount of saving money for CPUs and time ...

Yep But using "slaves" is common use for rendering (stupid) pictures (Cinebench4D or stuff like that)! So it should be possible for FE-Analysis too. At least COMSOL is optimized (it should be) for parallel computing. So there should be a way to create small jobs ... Concerning the SETI-Project they found a way :) I think this would be a great improvement of COMSOL. Just consider the amount of saving money for CPUs and time ...

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Posted: 1 decade ago 2010年7月7日 GMT-4 11:06

Yep

But using "slaves" is common use for rendering (stupid) pictures (Cinebench4D or stuff like that)! So it should be possible for FE-Analysis too. At least COMSOL is optimized (it should be) for parallel computing. So there should be a way to create small jobs ... Concerning the SETI-Project they found a way :)

I think this would be a great improvement of COMSOL. Just consider the amount of saving money for CPUs and time ...


Yeah, I posted a similar problem here, on how to use the cluster function of the new comsol. So far my research ended up in nothing. Beowulf clusters are not supported specifically by Comsol, nor I have the money to pay for windows HPC licenses (though I don't know if it will work). The next question will be the communication cost, which only makes sense on 3D models or sweep cases. Also, Comsol is not as efficient as Cinema4d rendererers, and uses parallelism only partially (jacobian calculations,...).

What actually worked was that I used python to run several instances of Comsol on a network license and control them. But this is not probably what you're looking for.
[QUOTE] Yep But using "slaves" is common use for rendering (stupid) pictures (Cinebench4D or stuff like that)! So it should be possible for FE-Analysis too. At least COMSOL is optimized (it should be) for parallel computing. So there should be a way to create small jobs ... Concerning the SETI-Project they found a way :) I think this would be a great improvement of COMSOL. Just consider the amount of saving money for CPUs and time ... [/QUOTE] Yeah, I posted a similar problem here, on how to use the cluster function of the new comsol. So far my research ended up in nothing. Beowulf clusters are not supported specifically by Comsol, nor I have the money to pay for windows HPC licenses (though I don't know if it will work). The next question will be the communication cost, which only makes sense on 3D models or sweep cases. Also, Comsol is not as efficient as Cinema4d rendererers, and uses parallelism only partially (jacobian calculations,...). What actually worked was that I used python to run several instances of Comsol on a network license and control them. But this is not probably what you're looking for.

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