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AcuSolve

The AcuSolve tools are available on the Intel Cluster for evaluation purposes by academic and industrial users.

Usage Conditions

The following conditions apply to the use of AcuSolve at the CCI:

  • Commercial users are allowed access for evaluation purposes; all other RPI/CCI users are allowed access for academic use.
  • Evaluation purposes are those which do not directly benefit product development, company related research, etc...
  • The current licenses are valid until May 2019, but we do not guarantee access throughout that entire period.
  • Altair will not provide direct software support; it will be mediated by SCOREC and CCI staff.
  • Non-problem specific software usage data is collected on a per user basis and provided to Altair for their internal use only.

Apply for Access

Send an email to with the subject "Access to ACUSIM" with the following fields completed:

 **Name:**
 **CCI User Name:**
 **Academic or Industrial User:**
 **School, Department and Professor Affiliation -or- Company Name:**
 **Brief description of interest in AcuSolve tools:**

Setting up your Environment

To use the AcuSolve version 12, 13, 14, or 2017.2 tools you will first need to setup your environment by doing the following:

Drp

module load acusolve/[12|13|14|2017.2]

When you are done using the AcuSolve tools you can revert your environment back to its previous state with:

module unload

With your environment setup you can then launch the the graphical interface with:

acuConsole

Mesh Generation

Meshing controls are specified through the AcuConsole GUI; the instructions in Workshop 2 - Blower page 84 to 90 of the AcuSolve_Training document describe how to set basic mesh controls on surfaces and volumns. On page 91 of this document the mesh generation process is executed via the AcuConsole GUI. The mesh generation process may also be executed without the AcuConsole GUI using the acuMeshSim executable. This is a useful tool if the mesh creation requires a long time or the memory requirements of mesh creation exceed those of the machine the AcuConsole GUI was executed on.

AcuMeshSim

After specifying the mesh controls select from the top menu "Tools->Generate Mesh". The dialog box depicted below should open.

Configure the mesh generation process, turn off "Launch AcuMeshSim", and then select "OK". An ".ams" file containing the mesh generation process settings and mesh controls should now exist in your directory.

Run AcuMeshSim on this file to generate the mesh.

acuMeshSim -inpfile.ams

Executing a Simulation

Example simulations can be executed on the DRP clusters as follows:

Copy the example

 # ---------------version 12---------------
 cp -r $ACUSIM_HOME/$ACUSIM_MACHINE/examples/channel .
 # ---------------version > 12 --------------
 cp -r $ACUSIM_HOME/$ACUSIM_MACHINE/model_files/examples/channel .

Submit the jobs using the acuSub script:

cd channel acuSub -pb channel -q debug -np 8 -ppn 8 -time 10

Here the problem name (-pb) is 'channel', the queue is (-q) 'debug', the number of processors (-np) is '8', the number of processor per node (-ppn) is '8', and the time limit (-time) is '10' minutes.

To see all the scripts options enter the following:

acuSub -h

Running one process per core has been found to be significantly faster than using two processes per core (hyperthreads).

An unsteady flow analysis using DES on a 15.5million elements (~2.6million nodes) ran, on average, one time step in 80 seconds without hyperthreads (-np 64 -ppn 8) vs. 180 seconds with hyperthreads (-np 128 -ppn 16).

Restarting a Simulation

Refer to the XYZ documentation for how to manually create a restart, .rst, file. The 'Launch AcuSolve' button in the AcuConsole interface can also create a restart file if the 'Restart' flag is set to 'on' as depicted below. Note that the settings for controlling the restart can be specified in the 'Restart' tab.

Once the restart file has been generated the simulation can be submitted to the CCI Opterons queue with the following command:

acuSub -inp.rst -q opterons -pb-np 8 -constraint blade -time 10

Count Stagger Iterations Within each Time Step

Create a file named countStaggerIterations.sh with the following contents:

 #!/bin/bash -e
 TIMESTEP=0
 STAGGERS=0
 while read LINE; do
   if [[/_"$LINE"_==_*Time-Step*_| "$LINE" == *Time-Step* ]]; 
   then
      echo TimeStep $TIMESTEP: staggers = $STAGGERS;
      STAGGERS=0;
      let TIMESTEP=TIMESTEP+1;
   fi
   if [[/_"$LINE"_=~_.*Flow.*stagger.*_| "$LINE" =~ .*Flow.*stagger.* ]]; then
     let STAGGERS=STAGGERS+1
   fi
 done

Make the file executable:

chmod +x countStaggerIterations.sh

Run the script using a log file from AcuSolve:

./countStaggerIterations.sh <..Log

Troubleshooting

Host key verification failed

If the following error appears when trying to run acuSolve:

acuRun: /gpfs/home/software/amd64-rhel5/proprietary/AcuSolve/LINUX64/latest/hpmpi/bin/mpirun -f channel.mpi.appfile
Host key verification failed.
mpirun: Warning one or more remote shell commands exited with non-zero status, which may indicate a remote access problem.
acuRun: *** ERROR: error occurred executing acuSolve
acuRun: Sat Mar 17 16:32:50 2012

run the following command in a terminal on a CCI landing pad:

echo "strictHostKeyChecking no" >> ~/.ssh/config

ssh_askpass

If the following error appears when trying to run acuSolve:

ssh_askpass: exec(/usr/libexec/openssh/ssh-askpass): No such file or directory
Permission denied (publickey,gssapi-with-mic,password).

setup password-less ssh access using ssh-keygen.

Documentation

Documentation materials for v12.0 can be found here:

/gpfs/u/software/x86-rhel6/proprietary/AcuSolve/altair/acusolve/linux64/doc /gpfs/u/software/x86-rhel6/proprietary/AcuSolve/altair/acusolve/linux64/Documents