Farming

Farming out of the steps of an optimisation involves the concurrent solution of various optimisation steps on a number of available processors or hosts.

Note: Farming not supported with the Simplex method.
When farming out the individual optimisation steps, the number of processes to start on each available host is specified in the machines file. This machines file has a syntax identical to that used for parallel runs. The basic syntax is:
Hostname:Number of processes
using a new line for each host.

During optimisation, new model files are continuously created by adding the string _opt_ and a sequentially incremented number to the file name of each relevant component file of the parametric model.

Example

Two hosts are available with names host1 and host21, with 4 and 8 processors respectively.

The machines file:

host1:4
host2:8
Launch an optimisation run with 12 processors for farming, results in the first 4 optimisation steps to be launched on host1 and the next 8 steps to be launched on host2.
optfeko <x> -np <n_farming> --machines-file <m>
where:
<x>
File name of the model
<n_farming>
Number of farming processes
<m>
File name of the machines file
1 this is the output of the UNIX command hostname)