Ten Ways to Reduce the Cost of EDA Infrastructure

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Ten Ways to Reduce the Cost of EDA Infrastructure


OpenLava

#1 Save Money with Faster

Hardware

EDA License features are costly, turning traditional TCO calculations on their head. When high value license features cost tens of thousands per year, it only makes sense to use the fastest hardware possible. Spending double on infrastructure to gain 30% in performance can reduce required license features, with potentially huge annual savings.


OpenLava

#2 Revisit the Cloud

For EDA firms who view running in the cloud as cost prohibitive or risky, you may want to do a re-think – An under-appreciated value of the cloud is the continuous technical refresh built into the price making it easier to be up and running on the latest hardware, reducing license checkout time, reducing cost and boosting productivity.


OpenLava

#3 Reduce Workload

Management Costs

While the cost of tools matter most, workload management can be a big expense for EDA firms. Open-source OpenLava provides most of the capabilities of IBM Platform LSF but is completely open-source and free. You can still obtain commercial support, while reducing your workload management license costs to zero!


OpenLava

#4 Avoid Costly and

Disruptive Migrations

In an effort to reduce costs, some firms migrate to open-source workload managers like Grid Engine, Moab or Condor. The problem? - As capable as these alternatives are, they are different than Platform LSF. This means a costly and disruptive migration that could be avoided by simply moving to OpenLava, a supported scheduler that maintains compatibility with Platform LSF.


OpenLava

#5 Bend the cost-curve with

cheaper support pricing

As EDA clients know, core and thread counts per socket are increasing. When you refresh your servers, you may end up doubling your core count. The problem? IBM’s RVU license and support pricing for Platform LSF is based on the number of cores. Support costs can double, and you may need to buy more licenses. OpenLava avoids this hidden tax with node-based support pricing and free licenses.


OpenLava

#6 Provision for average

rather than peak demand

Cloud-bursting will not be appropriate for all applications, but depending on your software licenses, it may be practical to burst jobs to the cloud dynamically during periods of peak demand. Teraproc’s HPC cluster-as-a-service makes this very economical allowing you to efficiently provision and pay for resources only when you need them.


OpenLava

#7 Provision clusters faster

for reduced cost

A dirty little secret about cloud bursting is that it demands fast, agile provisioning to actually save money. If it takes you two days to setup a cluster in the cloud that you need for just four hours, the economics won’t work. Teraproc’s HPC cluster-as-a-service allows you to deploy large clusters in just minutes helping you get full utilization of the cycles you are paying for.


OpenLava

#8 Take advantage of Spot

Pricing

Spot pricing is a mechanism available on Amazon Web Services that allows customers to bid for server capacity and name their price in an open market. According to Amazon, using spot pricing for non-critical workloads can yield an 80% reduction in infrastructure costs. Teraproc’s HPC cluster-as-a-service provides seamless access to spot pricing capabilities for greater savings.


OpenLava

#9 Consolidate clusters for

additional savings

Many EDA firms run separate compute clusters to service different locations. The problem with this is that it is difficult to share license features between clusters, and the distributed nature of your EDA farms may be costing you money. By consolidating to a smaller number of clusters you can possibly share license features more efficiently and reduce costs.


OpenLava

One of the reasons that Platform LSF is so popular among EDA firms is that it supports License scheduling, allowing features to be allocated and pre-empted based on configurable policies. Firms getting started with License Scheduling may wish to consult with Teraproc, and learn whether new License Scheduling features in OpenLava can support the use cases they have in mind.

#10 Use License

Scheduling


OpenLava

Achieve Savings with Teraproc,

your friend in the EDA business

Whether you are mildly intrigued, or not convinced in the least – simply exploring these options may provide you the negotiating leverage you need when it comes time to discuss your next software or support agreement! Before you negotiate, contact us and see if we can help you take cost out of your EDA environment –[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Ten Ways to Reduce the Cost of EDA Infrastructure

Technology