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Getting Started with Flux for EECS 470

Overview

This short guide is intended to get students, GSIs, and professors, started with synthesis builds using Synopsys Design Compiler on Flux.

If you haven't used Design Compiler yet (make syn with the Better Build System), I'd recommend attending lab or reading through the GSI's Synthesis and Makefile overview before proceding.

Before you get too deep in this guide, it's worth noting that the CAEN High Performance Computing (HPC) Group does a fairly reasonable job of documenting Flux on their homepage. If you want to figure everything out the hard way, jump on over to Getting Started at the CAC. This guide does cover a lot of the same content; however, in order to get you up and running quickly, I place a heavy emphasis on EECS 470 specifics and leave out a lot of general working knowledge.

In case you were handed this guide and have no idea why, a bit of context: the HPC Group describes Flux as:

The U-M's campus Linux-based high performance computing cluster

At the time of writing (Winter 2014), Flux is comprised:

  • 632 standard multi-core compute nodes (8,016 total cores)
    • 4GB of RAM per core
  • 10 large-memory compute nodes (32 or 40 cores per node)
    • 1TB of total RAM per system
  • 640TB of high-speed scratch storage

Full stats and configuration options are available on the HPC website: http://caen.engin.umich.edu/hpc/flux-configuration.

TL;DR

Flux is giant cluster of computers with lots of parallel computing power. This guide will teach you how to run synthesis on Flux.