Beijing, June 4, 2025/PRNewswire/-- Nowadays, when it comes to big models, GPU chips are the lifeblood. Without high-performance GPU chips, big models cannot run and their applications cannot be played. So the development of high-performance chips has become crucial. Take the simulation of a 7nm chip as an example, it can spray out thousands or even tens of thousands of tasks per minute, which may instantly squeeze out computing resources. How to schedule thousands of jobs in an orderly manner into a large-scale cluster? At this point, we need to invite the "master" of HPC (high-performance computing) scheduling - IBM Spectrum LSF!
In the era of big models, electronic semiconductors are currently a key area for technological breakthroughs. How can IBM Spectrum LSF assist semiconductor companies in meeting the high-performance chip demands of the AI era?
As a leader in the field of HPC scheduling, after thirty years of development, LSF can basically meet any scheduling needs you think of. LSF has a series of intelligent scheduling strategies that enable jobs to be completed with the most suitable resources and at the fastest speed. For example, for some critical tasks, LSF will turn on the green light to ensure that high priority tasks are completed in the queue, while low priority tasks will be taken to the side first. Workflow can also be arranged based on some dependency relationships of the assignment. At the same time, LSF will also scan the status of the entire cluster in real time, and immediately catch any server that is stealing water and fishing for fish, and arrange suitable tasks for it.
How does LSF help enterprises reduce costs and increase efficiency?
LSF can not only help companies increase efficiency, but also reduce costs. For example, in EDA (Electronic Design Automation) software, some commercial licenses are very expensive, so expensive that it makes people doubt their lives. There was once a semiconductor client who spent tens of millions of dollars annually to purchase commercial licenses for EDA software. For a regular scheduler, it only focuses on hardware resources and doesn't care about scheduling other resources such as licenses. As the "Swiss Army Knife" in the scheduling industry, LSF has a functional module called Licenses Scheduler, which is the only feature in the industry that can help enterprises schedule commercial licenses, allocate them as needed, and retrieve them in a timely manner when not in use. It can also schedule this license across projects. Taking the case just now as an example, this semiconductor company used the LSF Licenses Scheduler function module, and its license utilization rate skyrocketed by 38%, avoiding the situation of frequent job failures due to lack of licenses. So LSF not only helps businesses save money, but also improves work efficiency, truly achieving two goals with one stone.
What are the unique advantages of IBM Spectrum LSF?
Firstly, LSF is known as the "Swiss Army Knife" due to its powerful performance and rich features. LSF can support thousands of users submitting jobs to it and manage millions of jobs simultaneously. The functions of LSF are also very comprehensive, basically meeting the requirements we see in HPC scenarios, whether it is job management, job orchestration, job scheduling, or job monitoring. Other scheduling software of this kind may only meet some basic scheduling requirements, and it may not have access to high-performance or more intelligent strategies. There are also some, such as the commercial license scheduling function, which other scheduling software does not have.
On the other hand, IBM has a professional support team that operates 24/7 worldwide. If you encounter any problems while using LSF, you can always log in to our system or call for a solution. This kind of close professional support is also not available in some open source software.
What are the application scenarios of IBM Spectrum LSF?
The application scenarios of LSF are very extensive. Common scenarios include simulation of chip EDA, life sciences and biopharmaceuticals, high-end manufacturing of CIE, oil and gas, weather forecasting, artificial intelligence, and some super computing centers.
Currently, in chip electronics and semiconductor companies, whether large or minimally invasive, we see that 70-80% of them are already in use. There are also some medical industries where we can seamlessly integrate with medical software to perform genetic testing or protein simulation.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, LSF was the hero behind the scenes. It has played a significant role in the development of COVID-19 vaccines. A foreign COVID-19 vaccine research and development company has used LSF for its job scheduling, enabling its vaccine to be launched on the market as soon as possible.
We look at accurate weather forecasts every day, such as strong winds or rain, which also relies on LSF's high-performance resource allocation and job scheduling behind the scenes.
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