Increase LANDIS-II utilization of computer's resources

[Tucker Furniss]

Hi folks,

I'm curious if anyone has advice for improving run time for large LANDIS-II runs. I can imagine a few ways this may be done, but I can't seem to find any documentation describing to what extent this is possible with LANDIS-II v7. Ideally, I'd like to optimize LANDIS's use of my computer's resources rather than shipping it to a supercomputer. 

I'm running 100 year simulations over ~500,000 hectares, with a 90-m cell size, and 10-yr succession time steps. I have an i7 processor with 4 cores and 64 gb RAM. When the model runs, it uses only 20% of the overall CPU resources (but it does tell me "100% utilization over 60 seconds, and one core appears to be doing most of the heavy lifting), and it uses 12gb of memory. Currently, each succession time step takes ~3 hours early on, and nearly 6 hours as the simulation approaches completion. 

It appears to me that the CPU is the limiting factor here - is that right? Is there a way to run LANDIS on multiple cores, either with parallel processing or just allowing it to utilize other cores more heavily? It has it's own computer to run on, so I can give it all the resources it needs. 

Any advice on how to get LANDIS to use more of my computer's resources, or any other ways to speed LANDIS-II up, would be much appreciated. 

Cheers,

Tucker

[Josef Brůna]

Hi Tucker, 

as a user, I can recommend running several scenarios at once (one in its own cmd), ideally 1 for each core. If you are not limited by RAM or disk. By the way excessive output slows the model heavily, especially on normal HDD.
Josef

Dne čtvrtek 15. dubna 2021 v 11:49:28 UTC+2 uživatel tucker....@gmail.com napsal:

[Caren Dymond]

Hi Tucker

What Succession extension are you using?

Caren

[Tucker Furniss]

Hi Caren,

I'm running NECN v6.6. Disturbance extensions are SCRAPPLE and Biomass Harvest. 

Thanks for the tip Josef. I can see how that would be useful for running multiple scenarios, or multiple simulations, simultaneously. 

Tucker

[Caren Dymond]

Sorry can't help.

In ForCS you can change the output frequency to reduce simulation times.

Good luck

Caren

[Tucker Furniss]

So has anyone had any success speeding up individual LANDIS-II runs by using a super computer? Is it possible to utilize either parallel processing or multithreading with LANDIS-II?