Lumerical FDTD

Description

From the FDTD Solutions web site: Employing the industry proven finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, FDTD Solutions empowers designers to confront the most challenging optical design problems.

Version

• 8.5.3

Authorized Users

• Authorized research groups from the College of Engineering

Platforms

• CIRCE cluster
• Desktop Workstation

Install FDTD Solutions on a workstation

1. Download installer from https://mirror.rc.usf.edu/isos/Lumerical for your OS
2. When prompted for MPICH2 subsystem, do not install
3. Complete Installation and start FDTD Solutions from start menu or equivalent
4. A dialog for license configuration will appear. Choose "FlexNet Licensing" as the license type.
5. Specify the Server Name as license0.rc.usf.edu and the port as 27000.
   • Please note: Off campus users must be connected to the USF VPN first before installing/using Lumerical FDTD
6. Click on 'Submit' and close the browser window.
7. Click Ok on the previous license dialog and close FDTD Solutions (A few errors may pop up here, which can be ignored)
8. Re-open FDTD solutions.

Mapped Network Drive Configuration

It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you map your home directory to your S: drive and save all FDTD solution work to it. This way, it is available on the cluster when you decide its time to run a distributed analysis. For information on performing this process, see the following guide: Accessing Your Data

Running Lumerical FDTD on CIRCE

The Lumerical FDTD user guide is essential to understanding the application and making the most of it. The guide and this page should help you to get started with your simulations. Please refer to the Documentation section for a link to the guide.

• Note on CIRCE: Make sure to run your jobs from your $WORK directory!
• Note: Scripts are provided as examples only. Your SLURM executables, tools, and options may vary from the example below. For help on submitting jobs to the queue, see our SLURM User’s Guide.

Below is an example of how to run FDTD Solutions on CIRCE using your S: drive and locally-installed FDTD Solutions software.

1. From your workstation, save your project to S:\nanowire\nanowire.fsp

2. Then, log into CIRCE via SSH and change your directory to ~/nanowire, which is the same directory that appears on your S: drive:

[user@login0]$ cd ~/nanowire
[user@login0 nanowire]$

3. Next, create a script for your job, and submit it to SLURM.

• The script below (for testing, name it “lumerical-test.sh”) can be copied into your job directory (the folder with your input files) and modified so that you can submit batch processes to the queue.

#!/bin/bash
#
#SBATCH --comment=lumerical-test
#SBATCH --ntasks=8
#SBATCH --job-name=lumerical-test
#SBATCH --export=FSPFILE=nanowire.fsp
#SBATCH --output=output.%j.lumerical-test
#SBATCH --time=01:00:00

#### SLURM 8 processor Lumerical test to run for 1 hour.

module purge
module add apps/fdtd/8.5.3
module add compilers/intel/2013_cluster_xe

mpirun fdtd-engine-impi-lcl $FSPFILE

 
4. Finally, you can change to your job’s directory, and run the sbatch command to submit the job:

cd my/job/directory
sbatch ./lumcerical-test.sh

• You can view the status of your job with the “squeue -u <username>” command
  • Once the simulation is complete, you can open S:\nanowire\nanowire.fsp from FDTD Solutions on your workstation to view the results.

Documentation

Home Page, User Guides, and Manuals

• FDTD Home Page
  • http://www.lumerical.com/fdtd.php

Benchmarks, Known Tests, Examples, Tutorials, and Other Resources

• FDTD Examples
  • C:\Program Files\Lumerical\FDTD\examples

More Job Information

See the following for more detailed job submission information:

• SLURM User’s Guide
• Scheduling and Dispatch Policies
• Advanced Submit Techniques

Reporting Bugs

Report bugs with Lumerical FDTD to the IT Help Desk: rc-help@usf.edu