UCSB has a site license for Lumerical's FDTD software (as well as DEVICE and MODE - see this page for how to run them).

To run on the head node - just for data analysis, or short jobs - see the 'batch' section for longer job -, login with X forwarding (i.e. ssh -X) or use NX,

First, load the module (do "module avail" to see the different versions available)

module load lumerical/2019b

then you can run with

fdtd-solutions

When you're finished, please quit the program so other people can use it, we have a lot of licenses, but not unlimited, and it's a popular program.

Batch jobs for FSP files - see this page for how to run a script (LSF) file.

To run a 'fsp' file in the queue, you set your project up with the gui, then submit with the command fdtd-run-pbs.sh (on Pod, it's fdtd-run-slurm.sh).

[pcw@knot ~/lumerical]$ fdtd-solutions 2d.fsp

[pcw@knot ~/lumerical]$ fdtd-run-pbs.sh -n 8 2d.fsp

Submitting: 2d.sh

580512.node96

This will have submitted the job.  You can check on them with the 'qstat -u username' command, where you substitute your username in there so you only see your jobs.  

[pcw@knot ~/lumerical]$ qstat -u $USER

node96:                                                                                   Req'd    Req'd       Elap Job ID                  Username    Queue    Jobname          SessID  NDS   TSK   Memory   Time    S   Time ----------------------- ----------- -------- ---------------- ------ ----- ------ ------ --------- - --------- 580512.node96           pcw         batch    2d.sh               --      1      8  667mb  00:26:08 R  00:00:02

In this case it was run with 8 cores - that's the -n flag  (you can run it with up to 12 cores on knot, and 40 cores on pod.)

The last command 'qstat' (showq $USER on pod) shows you what the job is doing.  Once it shows C in the status column (in this example it's running 'R') you can open the fsp file with the GUI and do the analysis.