Automatic CPU frequency selection

Automatic CPU frequency selection allows an organization to balance performance with power savings.

LSF uses a formula to predict the power consumption and the elapsed time of the job running in a specific CPU frequency. The coefficients used in the formula vary depending on hardware configuration. Before any job is scheduled to run in a cluster, the coefficients need to be determined on every compute node in each frequency.

Running at a lower CPU frequency can save energy, but machine performance may suffer and the run time will be longer. Each job may have different resource requirements. The energy consumption may be very different between a CPU-bound job and an IO-bound job. LSF’s automatic CPU frequency selection feature makes it easier to choose the best frequency at which to run your jobs to maximize energy savings and minimize run time.

Each compute node runs in the nominal CPU frequency by default. When the node is idle or after it has completed a job, the compute node will switch back to nominal frequency.