Altair Case Studies CEA Tech Enhances R&D Efficiency with Altair Accelerator

	CEA Tech Enhances R&D Efficiency with Altair Accelerator Altair

CEA Tech Enhances R&D Efficiency with Altair Accelerator

Altair

Technology Category	Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Event-Driven Application
Applicable Industries	Electronics Equipment & Machinery
Applicable Functions	Product Research & Development Quality Assurance
Use Cases	Time Sensitive Networking
Services	System Integration
Challenge	CEA Tech, a technology research unit for the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, is a global leader in miniaturization technologies. As a research and development center, they develop advanced technologies that require a robust computing infrastructure. They use various process design kits (PDKs) from multiple foundries for R&D designs, which include complex digital systems on a chip (SoCs), RF circuits, and analog and mixed-signal chips. EDA licenses are used throughout the design flow, with compute jobs varying in terms of run time and memory footprint. The design flows for circuits in advanced nodes are complex, making it critical to manage licenses and job scheduling to shorten the design cycle. CEA Tech needed to improve license utilization and ensure that licenses are freed quickly to be made available to queued jobs. Read More
About Customer	CEA Tech is the Grenoble-based technology research unit for the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). They are a global leader in miniaturization technologies that enable smart digital systems and secure, energy-efficient solutions for industry. By improving companies’ competitiveness through product performance and differentiation, CEA Tech catalyzes and accelerates innovation, pioneering micro- and nanotechnologies and tailoring solutions for global companies, small and medium-sized enterprises, and startups alike. Their multi-disciplinary team of experts tackles critical challenges in healthcare, energy, digital migration, and more in their world-class facilities. Read More
Solution	CEA Tech was already using Altair® Monitor™ for real-time EDA license monitoring and management when they evaluated three competing job schedulers to further optimize their design process. They chose Altair® Accelerator™ because of its scalability, superior visibility, and seamless integration with existing tools. Accelerator has several important strengths, including two interfaces that allow the team to view job status and another that displays servers, running jobs, license resources, cores, RAM, and more. Accelerator calculates the right resources for interactive and batch jobs automatically, so designers don’t need to worry about detailed resource specifications. Jobs run on the fastest servers based on time of day, and the system prioritizes critical jobs. This ensures jobs execute on the fastest available machines, improving turnaround time and making optimal use of available licenses. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Event-Driven Application

Applicable Industries

Electronics

Equipment & Machinery

Applicable Functions

Product Research & Development

Quality Assurance

Use Cases

Time Sensitive Networking

Services

System Integration

Challenge

CEA Tech, a technology research unit for the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, is a global leader in miniaturization technologies. As a research and development center, they develop advanced technologies that require a robust computing infrastructure. They use various process design kits (PDKs) from multiple foundries for R&D designs, which include complex digital systems on a chip (SoCs), RF circuits, and analog and mixed-signal chips. EDA licenses are used throughout the design flow, with compute jobs varying in terms of run time and memory footprint. The design flows for circuits in advanced nodes are complex, making it critical to manage licenses and job scheduling to shorten the design cycle. CEA Tech needed to improve license utilization and ensure that licenses are freed quickly to be made available to queued jobs.

About Customer

CEA Tech is the Grenoble-based technology research unit for the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). They are a global leader in miniaturization technologies that enable smart digital systems and secure, energy-efficient solutions for industry. By improving companies’ competitiveness through product performance and differentiation, CEA Tech catalyzes and accelerates innovation, pioneering micro- and nanotechnologies and tailoring solutions for global companies, small and medium-sized enterprises, and startups alike. Their multi-disciplinary team of experts tackles critical challenges in healthcare, energy, digital migration, and more in their world-class facilities.

Solution

CEA Tech was already using Altair® Monitor™ for real-time EDA license monitoring and management when they evaluated three competing job schedulers to further optimize their design process. They chose Altair® Accelerator™ because of its scalability, superior visibility, and seamless integration with existing tools. Accelerator has several important strengths, including two interfaces that allow the team to view job status and another that displays servers, running jobs, license resources, cores, RAM, and more. Accelerator calculates the right resources for interactive and batch jobs automatically, so designers don’t need to worry about detailed resource specifications. Jobs run on the fastest servers based on time of day, and the system prioritizes critical jobs. This ensures jobs execute on the fastest available machines, improving turnaround time and making optimal use of available licenses.

Impact #1	The implementation of Altair Accelerator has enabled CEA Tech to schedule hundreds of thousands of jobs each week, including nonregression verification, logic synthesis, place and route, timing analysis, physical verification, SPICE, and electromagnetic simulation. Rather than leaving users waiting due to job saturation, preemption with FairShare allows them to get critical licenses automatically. Jobs are completed optimally, in the fastest time with the right number of licenses. This smart mechanism makes the number of licenses seem unlimited, which is crucial as chips become larger, design flows become increasingly complex, and the push for energy efficiency grows. Having the right tools is more important than ever in order to carefully manage EDA budgets and optimize valuable compute resources.

Impact #1

The implementation of Altair Accelerator has enabled CEA Tech to schedule hundreds of thousands of jobs each week, including nonregression verification, logic synthesis, place and route, timing analysis, physical verification, SPICE, and electromagnetic simulation. Rather than leaving users waiting due to job saturation, preemption with FairShare allows them to get critical licenses automatically. Jobs are completed optimally, in the fastest time with the right number of licenses. This smart mechanism makes the number of licenses seem unlimited, which is crucial as chips become larger, design flows become increasingly complex, and the push for energy efficiency grows. Having the right tools is more important than ever in order to carefully manage EDA budgets and optimize valuable compute resources.

Benefit #1	Speed increase of more than 4.5x using Accelerator without FairShare
Benefit #2	Performance was still an impressive 3.9x faster even when the team implemented FairShare to allow multi-user license access
Benefit #3	Ability to schedule hundreds of thousands of jobs each week

Benefit #1

Speed increase of more than 4.5x using Accelerator without FairShare

Benefit #2

Performance was still an impressive 3.9x faster even when the team implemented FairShare to allow multi-user license access

Benefit #3

Ability to schedule hundreds of thousands of jobs each week

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Overview

CEA Tech Enhances R&D Efficiency with Altair Accelerator

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit