Synopsys

Synopsys Dramatically Improves Utilization of Grid Computing

Synopsys is a leader in providing electronic design automation (EDA) software, services, and intellectual property cores for the semiconductor and electronics industries, with annual revenues of more than US$991 million and a large infrastructure is dispersed across more than 60 locations worldwide.

Customer Challenges

Maintain highest possible utilization of the grid's resources at all times
Improve the speed and quality of regression testing
Quickly integrate the IT resources of newly acquired companies

Solution

Synopsys deployed the Sun N1 Grid Engine's advanced scheduling features, such as resource reservation, unified ticketing, and backfilling, to ensure availability of vital resources for critical workloads and enable the highest-possible utilization of grid resources.

Business Results

Quadrupled key regression tests in one year
Reduced testing time by 80 percent
Maximized usage of CPU cycles
Completed project two weeks early
Accelerated integration of IT resources

Products and Services

Story Details

Synopsys deploys grid computing in order to solve problems too big for any single supercomputer while retaining the flexibility to work on multiple smaller problems. The Synopsys grid's main use is in regression testing, which is vital to the EDA industry and to Synopsys' bottom line. Approximately one million regression tests are processed in a given night on one major portion of Synopsys' grid. Sun N1 Grid Engine software finds idle resources and harnesses them productively, so that an organization can get as much as five times the usable power out of systems on the network.

" With the help of Sun products, our grid performance meets and exceeds our expectations every time. "

— Sriram Sitaraman, Senior Manager of Information Technology, Synopsys

Managing heavy usage and leaving no processor idle--or overloaded--requires careful scheduling. "The quality of our product depends on regression testing--large volumes of testing, processed quickly and accurately," says Sriram Sitaraman, Senior Manager of Information Technology, Synopsys. "Sun has enabled our developers to process the most regression tests possible in any given night." The scalability of Sun products, and the scheduler in particular, has helped Synopsys integrate the IT resources of its acquisitions. "It is possible to affect near-immediate IT integration," says Sitaraman, "no matter where the acquired company is located, or what IT resources it has."

As a result of using Sun products, Synopsys has experienced an overall improvement in the grid's speed and performance. According to Sitaraman, "the number of regression tests performed by one user group on the grid has quadrupled over the course of one year--without the scalability of Sun's N1 Grid Engine scheduler, this would have been impossible."

In summary, the Sun N1 Grid Engine and Sun infrastructure has been the key for Synopsys to maximize ROI in the IT department. Synopsys has found Sun products to be crucial to the success of its grid computing infrastructure, which is a key foundation of its business.