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Hi all,<br>
<br>
I am sending a reminder regarding two unanswered questions on the mailing list, in case someone has a suggestion.<br>
<br>
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<div role="presentation" class="elementToProof">Clarification about how SimFactory handles the "--memory" option and how this affects how one should navigate the cluster's billing policy:</div>
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<div role="presentation" class="elementToProof"><a id="LPlnk557853" href="https://lists.einsteintoolkit.org/pipermail/users/2025-September/009761.html">https://lists.einsteintoolkit.org/pipermail/users/2025-September/009761.html</a></div>
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<div role="presentation" class="elementToProof">Using 'leonardo-dcgp.ini' and understanding how to properly request one full node:</div>
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<div role="presentation" class="elementToProof"><a id="LPlnk416851" href="https://lists.einsteintoolkit.org/pipermail/users/2025-September/009762.html">https://lists.einsteintoolkit.org/pipermail/users/2025-September/009762.html</a></div>
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<br>
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Thanks,</div>
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Panayotis</div>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> Users <users-bounces@einsteintoolkit.org> on behalf of IOSIF PANAGIOTIS <PANAGIOTIS.IOSIF@units.it><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Monday, September 29, 2025 12:24 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> Roland Haas <rhaas@mail.ubc.ca>; Bruno Giacomazzo <bruno.giacomazzo@unimib.it><br>
<b>Cc:</b> Einstein Toolkit Users <users@einsteintoolkit.org><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Users] Inconsistency warnings: cores/threads mismatch [Leonardo cluster]</font>
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Hi Roland,<br>
<br>
Thanks for your reply.<br>
You touch on an important point, i.e the <b>cluster's</b> <b>billing policy</b>, that hadn't crossed my mind.<br>
<br>
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>From the billing policy of Leonardo, it seems that <b>it is</b> <b>possible to use only a fraction of a node's total CPUs.</b></div>
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<a class="x_OWAAutoLink" id="LPlnk971574" href="https://docs.hpc.cineca.it/hpc/hpc_intro.html#billing-policy">https://docs.hpc.cineca.it/hpc/hpc_intro.html#billing-policy</a></div>
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<br>
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<b>However</b>, the documentation also stresses that:</div>
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<i>...if a job reserves all of a node’s RAM — even without utilizing all its CPUs — the node becomes unusable for other jobs and is therefore billed accordingly.<br>
<br>
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So, apart from the cores requested, <b>should I also try to calculate the RAM requirements?</b></div>
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For example, I see that Bruno's "leonardo-dcgp.ini" file specifies:</div>
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<code>memory = 494000</code></div>
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And the respective submitscript also has this line:</div>
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<code>#SBATCH --mem 494000MB</code></div>
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<br>
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I note that each node in Leonardo has 512GB of RAM, so that means that <b>the script requests ~94.2% of the RAM.</b></div>
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I am not sure I follow the reasoning behind this.<br>
<br>
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What is the default behavior of SimFactory if I were to remove the above specifications from the config files?</div>
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Because, if by default Simfactory requests/uses all the RAM available in a node, then as far as I understand, it does not make sense to request fewer cores than a full node.<br>
Let me know what you think.<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Panayotis <br>
<br>
<br>
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<div id="x_divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000" style="font-size:11pt"><b>From:</b> Roland Haas <rhaas@mail.ubc.ca><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Friday, September 26, 2025 4:31 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> Bruno Giacomazzo <bruno.giacomazzo@unimib.it><br>
<b>Cc:</b> IOSIF PANAGIOTIS <PANAGIOTIS.IOSIF@units.it>; Einstein Toolkit Users <users@einsteintoolkit.org><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Users] Inconsistency warnings: cores/threads mismatch [Leonardo cluster]</font>
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<div class="x_PlainText">Hello all,<br>
<br>
> I never used --cores and I don't know the difference with procs.<br>
<br>
--cores is a synonym for --procs in simfactory. The hope was to avoid<br>
the confusion of "procs" being "Processes" or "Processors". Though it<br>
has been pointed out that the best name would actually be "--threads"<br>
since that is what simfactory actually starts, which then collides with<br>
"--num-threads" (threads per process).<br>
<br>
Does Leonardo actually charge you for partial nodes if you do no use a<br>
full one? Simfactory is mostly written under the assumption (true at<br>
the time) that HPC systems would give you full nodes all the time, so<br>
if you use 1 core or 112 cores of a node, the charge would be the same<br>
(though shared node systems are becoming more common for HPC now [or<br>
again]).<br>
<br>
Yours,<br>
Roland<br>
<br>
-- <br>
My email is as private as my paper mail. I therefore support encrypting<br>
and signing email messages. Get my PGP key from <a href="http://pgp.mit.edu">http://pgp.mit.edu</a> .<br>
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