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CST Studio

Computer Simulation Technology (CST) Studio offers accurate, efficient computational solutions for electromagnetic design and analysis.

CST Studio is available as an Apptainer container on Apocrita.

Usage

GUI support via OnDemand

To use the CST Studio Design Environment GUI, launch the software via the OnDemand CST Studio interactive app.

CST Studio Python libraries in versions 2021+

The CST Studio 2021+ Apptainer containers include the CST Python libraries (versions prior to 2021 do not come bundled with these libraries), which may be used within the built-in Python interpreter, without needing to load a Python module. See the examples below for further information on how to use the CST Python libraries.

To run the default version of CST Studio, simply load the cst_studio module:

$ module load cst_studio
$ cst_studio cst_design_environment --help

CST STUDIO options:

STUDIO options:
  --m                                   Starts CST MICROWAVE STUDIO
  --s                                   Starts CST EM STUDIO
  --t                                   Starts CST PARTICLE STUDIO
  --mp                                  Starts CST MPHYSICS STUDIO
  --c                                   Starts CST DESIGN STUDIO
...

The above output has been truncated, run the cst_design_environment --help command within the container to see the full list of available options.

Example jobs

In the examples below, replace SOLVERS with the CST solvers you wish to use.

Serial jobs

Here is an example job running on 1 core and 5GB of memory:

#!/bin/bash
#$ -cwd
#$ -j y
#$ -pe smp 1
#$ -l h_vmem=5G

module load cst_studio

cst_studio cst_design_environment \
  --numthreads ${NSLOTS} \
  SOLVERS input_file.cst

Here is an example job which calls the built-in Python interpreter and imports the CST Python library cst.results, before printing the version of the library. This job will request 1 core and 5GB of memory:

#!/bin/bash
#$ -cwd
#$ -j y
#$ -pe smp 1
#$ -l h_vmem=5G

module load cst_studio

cst_studio python -c 'import cst.results; print(cst.results.__version__)'

To run the built-in Python interpreter inside the container, simply run cst_studio python inside an interactive job.

GPU job

CUDA support

CUDA has been installed inside the CST Studio containers so you do not need to load a CUDA module before running your analysis.

Here is an example job running on 8 cores and 1 GPU:

#!/bin/bash
#$ -cwd
#$ -j y
#$ -pe smp 12
#$ -l gpu=1
#$ -l h_vmem=7.5G

module load cst_studio

cst_studio cst_design_environment \
  --numthreads ${NSLOTS} \
  -withgpu=1 \
  SOLVERS input_file.cst

Ensure the -withgpu=X parameter exists and is set to the number of GPUs requested.

References