HyperWorks Solvers Unit Draw

A description of the licensing for the solvers.

There are two options to license solvers:
  • Per-Job licensing
  • Unlimited Solver Node (Per-Node) licensing

In addition to the unit draw of solvers during runtime, Feko and OptiStruct check for the existence of a license during initial check and preparation runs. The Radioss Starter checks for the existence of a Radioss feature. These license checks do not draw any units.

The following table lists all the solver license feature names.
Feature Name
Functionality
Acusolve
AcuSolve™ Navier-Stokes CFD Solver
Acufwh
AcuSolve Noise Propagation Solver
Acutrace
AcuSolve™ Particle Tracer
Acuview
AcuSolve™ View Factor Computation Solver
ElectroFloSolver
ElectroFlo™ Electronics Cooling Solver
FEKOSolver
Feko™ High-frequency Electromagnetics Solvers
FluxSolver
Flux™ 3D, Skew, PEEC Low-frequency Electromagnetics Solver
nanoFluidX
nanoFluidX™ GPU-based Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) Solver
HyperFormSolver
HyperForm™ One Step Stamping Solver
HyperXtrudeFEA
HyperXtrude™ Full Transient Solver
MotionSolve
MotionSolve™ Multibody Solver
OptiStruct
OptiStruct™ Structural Optimization
OptiStructFEA
OptiStruct™ Structural and Multi-Physics Solver, Analysis only
Radioss
Radioss™ Explicit Structural and Multi-Physics Solver
SimSolid
SimSolid™ Meshless Structural Solver
ultraFluidX
ultraFluidX™ GPU-based Lattice-Boltzmann CFD Solver
WinPropSolver
WinProp™ Radio Wave Propagation Solver

The license file may contain other solver related feature names for compatibility with previous releases of HyperWorks.

HyperWorks Per-Job Licensing

In HyperWorks Per-Job licensing, the number of HyperWorks Units required to run solver jobs varies depending on the number of the CPU cores and GPU, how many jobs are running concurrently, and whether it is a co-simulation run.

The number of HWUs drawn per job depending on the number of cores and/or GPU per job is shown in the tables below.

GPU acceleration is implemented for AcuSolve, Feko, and OptiStruct. One GPU is counted as one additional CPU-core. For example, if running an OptiStruct job using 4 cores plus 1 GPU, it will be considered as 5 cores.

The CFD solvers nanoFluidX and ultraFluidX are a direct GPU implementation and use a HWU count solely based on the number of GPUs.

In multiphysics co-simulation the two coupled solvers will be considered as one. For example, AcuSolve on 32 CPU-cores, co-simulating with OptiStruct on 4 cores for a Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) simulation will be considered in the exact same way as one single job running on 36 CPU-cores.
Cores + GPU Acusolve, Acuview, Acutrace, Acufwh, ElectroFloSolver, FEKOSolver, FluxSolver, HyperFormSolver, HyperXtrudeFEA, MotionSolve, OptiStructFEA, Radioss, SimSolid, WinPropSolver, Coupled Solver 1 OptiStruct2
1-4 30 50
5-8 35 55
9-16 40 60
17-32 50 70
33-64 60 80
65-128 70 90
129-256 80 100
257-512 90 110
513-1024 100 120
Each duplication +10 +10
GPU nanoFluidX ultraFluidX
1 25 50
2 50 100
3-4 100 150
5-8 150 200
9-16 200 250
Each duplication +50 +50

On top of the per-job license draw, a decay function is implemented. The decay reduces the total license draw, if multiple solver jobs are running concurrently off the same license server. The decay factor is a multiplier applied to the regular license draw of a solver job and is applied across all Acusolve, Acufwh, Acutrace, Acuview, ElectroFloSolver, FEKOSolver, FluxSolver, HyperFormSolver, HyperXtrudeFEA, OptiStruct, OptiStructFEA, Radioss and WinPropSolver licenses features. See table below.

Once a job has finished the next job will backfill into the vacated slot, and the same multiplier is applied as for the previous job. Once a job has started, the checked-out unit amount for that job will not change.
Job Number
Decay Factor
1
1.0
2...10
0.9
11...20
0.8
21...30
0.7
31-40
0.6
41-50
0.5
50+
0.4
Per-job licensed 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 level.
  • The HWUs stack when starting the second and so forth invoke of the solver.
  • When the leveled job finishes, the next invoke levels again.

For example, if the user launches HyperMesh first (21 HWUs), and then launches Radioss (30 HWUs), 30 HWUs will be drawn. If the same user on the same machine adds an OptiStruct job (50 HWUs requested), the total units drawn is 45 HWUs due to decay. If the user now adds a second OptiStruct job, the total units drawn will only be increased to 90 HWUs (0.9*50+0.9*50 HWUs).

SimSolid always uses the maximum number of cores available. There is no extra draw for more than 4 cores.

HyperWorks Solver Node (Per-Node) Licensing

The HyperWorks Solver Node license scheme is a per-compute node usage-based licensing. All solver instances, no matter what solver and how many cores per job are used draw HWUs based on the total number of compute nodes being used by all concurrent solver jobs combined. This license always stacks. Decay is based on the total number of nodes.

The following license features are included:
  • Acusolve
  • Acufwh
  • Acutrace
  • Acuview
  • ElectroFloSolver
  • FEKOSolver
  • FluxSolver
  • HyperFormSolver
  • HyperXtrudeFEA
  • MotionSolve
  • OptiStruct
  • OptiStructFEA
  • Radioss
  • WinPropSolver
Number of Nodes HWUs Cumulative HWUs
1 36 36
2 30 66
3 24 90
4 18 108
5 12 120
10 12 180
15 12 240
20 12 300
21 6 306
...    
50 6 480
Each additional node +6 +6

This means the user can run as many jobs as fit on a node for one HWU count. Today nodes with 16 or 20 cores are not uncommon.

For example, an engineering group is running simultaneously 10 MotionSolve and 2 OptiStruct/Analysis jobs on a cluster, occupying three compute nodes, the license draw is 90 HWUs. Under the Per-Job licensing scheme, this would require 330 HWUs.

In addition to the solver draw, should the job entail optimization with OptiStruct an additional 20 HWUs per OptiStruct job will be drawn.

The HyperWorks Solver Node licensing scheme needs to be turned on by a SolverNode feature in the license file. This license feature can be turned on/off by removing/adding comment signs (#) from/to the license feature in the license file. See Turning SolverNode Licensing On/Off.

Leveling of interactive applications is not affected. For example, a user on a workstation uses HyperMesh, HyperGraph (21 HWUs leveled) plus two OptiStructFEA (36 HWUs for the first node), a (maximum) total of 57 HWUs is drawn.

It should be noted that the HWUL Solver Node licensing is just like traditional HyperWorks Units licensing. It is usage-based. HWUs are drawn from the pool at runtime and returned after completion of the job. Jobs are backfilled depending on what node they are running. For the licensing, the host names of the nodes are queried by the application. It does not matter how big the computer system is, it matters how many nodes are actually in use simultaneously. There is no draw adjustment during runtime.

Turning SolverNode Licensing On/Off

The HyperWorks Solver Node license is turned off in the original license file delivered by Altair. During the installation of the license server, the license needs to be turned on.

  1. Turn on the license by removing the comment signs (#) in front of the license feature.
  2. To reverse, the comments can be added back in.
    Note: The license server needs to be restarted each time the license file is being modified.
    Example for SolverNode deactivated:
    #FEATURE SolverNode
#{
#VENDOR = ALTAIR
#COUNT = 10000
#KEYTYPE = EXCLUSIVE
#VERSION = 16.0
#END = 2018-01-03
#BORROW = 336
#SHARE = CUSTOM|VIRTUAL
#COMMENT =       “HOSTID=asdfasfdasdfasdfadsfasfd"
#SN =    "670DF95C-D901-11E0-982F-8C04D334D7F413"
#KEY =  DVC6IF2FAE7O4JD7FVMHGOL50RJE3ACMTA78PNL6H3TK0KG2NCQUE90EGK381BNVCMLKL1 \
#       PD0F167DOCFT8F0MMVUMPEA33K8ULOKUF06V2KGDL8KV9ROJSPO8SS3CDKTLM0Q89MUS9J \
#       OQUO6HF8L362MSU42L1KJ8C1SOSUUNBOTGC8RK1I4Q7AN9ITV7AV2885NICBEB4VETHB4L \
#       S9R2GI4GOTOJ0DU5UKEF4DKNS8BFHIUEF:EKFETBFP0NOIP567VFA9PT4QGH0AHKBU8PDF \
#       UIBHCHBDL11KUJB2D50NSOHUV8QMSKOPJ5C8DJ47MHE0KT6QL45RG3VRGHS346B7KFSJ9U \
#       3GAR81S4LTO66M6L9MGVBMJFVK64ORTTGKKM48DVRMEN5U0U2NONNIGSHAOTC44TEK3J51 \
#       F7ITPLQ40H4E38QB88AS8UTU42H2FOWKD<SPCMVLPJLKBV44NL9SDKUUUQIL4952P \
#       TFLFQLN1F2SR8UEG9PHQM7J1TB4M1FPHCN6ESCUL9NQ437C4AH8AKV037845RG5E36G266 \
#       LDUMJKRBG1QVR7ECMR0HKRFJ96T1LFJKEFLEH2CH6TIJ8B4PADOLNC3KTKQ5NPVMBB \
#       QP4UQH3JHNKM677PIV7S9QE0LNDR9D2FROVS9QK1UPUJH9PP8J8F9ILBDMSF23LHDH4I7L \
#       7O52G84RDHCS93J9JK86
#}
    Example for SolverNode activated:
    FEATURE SolverNode
{
VENDOR = ALTAIR
COUNT = 10000
KEYTYPE = EXCLUSIVE
VERSION = 16.0
END = 2018-01-03
BORROW = 336
SHARE = CUSTOM|VIRTUAL
COMMENT =       “HOSTID=asdfasfdasdfasdfadsfasfd"
SN =    "670DF95C-D901-11E0-982F-8C04D334D7F413"
KEY =  DVC6IF2FAE7O4JD7FVMHGOL50RJE3ACMTA78PNL6H3TK0KG2NCQUE90EGK381BNVCMLKL1 \
       PD0F167DOCFT8F0MMVUMPEA33K8ULOKUF06V2KGDL8KV9ROJSPO8SS3CDKTLM0Q89MUS9J \
       OQUO6HF8L362MSU42L1KJ8C1SOSUUNBOTGC8RK1I4Q7AN9ITV7AV2885NICBEB4VETHB4L \
       S9R2GI4GOTOJ0DU5UKEF4DKNS8BFHIUEF:EKFETBFP0NOIP567VFA9PT4QGH0AHKBU8PDF \
       UIBHCHBDL11KUJB2D50NSOHUV8QMSKOPJ5C8DJ47MHE0KT6QL45RG3VRGHS346B7KFSJ9U \
       3GAR81S4LTO66M6L9MGVBMJFVK64ORTTGKKM48DVRMEN5U0U2NONNIGSHAOTC44TEK3J51 \
       F7ITPLQ40H4E38QB88AS8UTU42H2FOWKD<SPCMVLPJLKBV44NL9SDKUUUQIL4952P \
       TFLFQLN1F2SR8UEG9PHQM7J1TB4M1FPHCN6ESCUL9NQ437C4AH8AKV037845RG5E36G266 \
       LDUMJKRBG1QVR7ECMR0HKRFJ96T1LFJKEFLEH2CH6TIJ8B4PADOLNC3KTKQ5NPVMBB \
       QP4UQH3JHNKM677PIV7S9QE0LNDR9D2FROVS9QK1UPUJH9PP8J8F9ILBDMSF23LHDH4I7L \
       7O52G84RDHCS93J9JK86
}
1 ElectroFloSolver, HyperFormSolver, HyperXtrudeFEA, and MotionSolve are not SMPD capable.
2 OptiStruct Optimization