Take a Technology Leap with Altair

It is not uncommon for chip design companies to exclusively allocate compute resources to distinct teams, technology groups or projects. This could be done by physically separate compute hardware or job queues that have exclusive access to subsections of a larger cluster.

Though guaranteeing access to compute resources to certain groups of user, distinct compute resources create inefficiency in that they are rarely all fully utilized while other users may be starved of compute resources at high workload times.

Unifying all compute resources into a single compute farm, under control of advanced workload management software ensures the highest possible throughput of simulation workload for all user groups.

Altair^® Accelerator™ is industry's fastest enterprise job scheduler. It was designed with high throughput computing in mind and is perfectly suited to optimizing utilization of existing simulation resources in the semiconductor industry.  

Neither the scale of the compute resources or number of jobs in the queue is of concern to Accelerator.  Clusters in excess of 50,000 cores can have more than 500,000 jobs in the queue, which is handled by Accelerator without any delay or inefficiency.  Accelerator can do this because it is an event-based scheduler, executing jobs immediately when resources are available.

HPC throughput is often hampered by jobs waiting for EDA simulation licenses.  These jobs were allocated resources in the system without checking that EDA simulation licenses are available. The resources are then held while the jobs wait for licenses, severely reducing cluster throughput.  The problem can be addressed with home-grown front-end scripts but this solution is difficult to maintain and evolve over time.

Altair^® Monitor™ tracks the availability of EDA simulation licenses in real time. This information can be used to turn these licenses into resources that are also managed by die workload management system.  In this manner, Altair Accelerator becomes a license-aware scheduler, that ensures jobs are not stalled in the compute system for lack of simulation licenses.  They will only run when the required licenses are available, thereby optimizing utilization of existing HPC simulation resources.

Managing job scripts, file transfers and command-line options to run jobs add unnecessary complexity to simulation workload requests.  Altair^® Access™ provides a GUI to users which guides them in selecting appropriate parameters for simulation requests. 

Leading semiconductor design organizations use a combination of on-premise and cloud computing resources to deliver timely on cyclically varying workload requirements.  Altair^® NavOps^®combine these disparate resources into a single, simple to use entity for end-users and sysadmins.  Appropriate resources can simply be requested for workload and NavOps will secure the correct resources accordingly and transparently to the user, while retaining total control for sysadmins and business administrators. 

Semiconductor designers, algorithm developers and software engineers all work with complicated simulation workflows, based on a multitude of dependencies.  These flows depend on the availability of compute resources and limited software licenses.  Understanding the flow itself and optimizing it for inherent parallelism while avoiding resource conflicts improve throughput and make users more efficient.  

Altair^® FlowTracer™ does exactly that.  It is an advanced design flow development and execution platform that provides users with unique flow visualization and troubleshooting capabilities for greater productivity.

Job submission in semiconductor workloads typically ask the user for information on resources that would be required to run the job. The answers to these questions heavily influence throughput in the system. Jobs that request too much run time, RAM or unnecessarily large compute resources will wait in the workload management queues for too long and will waste resources when they eventually run.

Fortunately, semiconductor workloads are usually highly predictable given an understanding of typical requirements for particular workloads.  AI/ML tools from Altair can learn the these requirements and can offer suggestions to end-users to make it easier for them to submit job requests.  In several circumstances, AI/ML models can even override user requests with confidence, thereby reducing complexity of workload requests for end-users and improving accuracy in workload requests.  In either scenario, the system will demonstrate higher throughput and efficiency.

Altair^® AI Studio and Altair^® AI Hub are only two examples of how Altair technology reduce job submission complexity for end-users in semiconductor design computing environments.

Cost control and allocation is critically important in environments where resources are scarce and/or costly.  In semiconductor compute environments this includes compute time both on-site and possibly in the cloud and also utilization of expensive EDA simulation licences.

Assigning cost to projects, technology groups, or product teams can be continuously monitored by measurable metrics like CPU core-hours.

Costs and performance measures can be monitored in near real-time with Altair^® Panopticon™ and reported accordingly.  This process automates and simplifies project management for both end-users and system administrators.

Time to market in semiconductor development environments are critical. Slowing down design work during compute system down time is clearly detrimental to time to market and cannot be tolerated.  Excellent support and continuous development of the software that governs the compute environment is key to the success of chip designers.

Job management systems are bread-and-butter for Altair with decades of experience in developing different workload managers and ancillary software. These workload managers are backed up by excellent support that will speed up problem solving in the development environments making the compute system more stable, reliable and predictable.

Customer references testify to their satisfaction with Altair's software solutions and technical partnership.