batch runs in Ngene?

[alex.mitrani]

I understand from the manual that Ngene doesn't enable you to specify a batch of "design" routines and get them to run sequentially, is that right? If this is the case, then I suggest that batch run functionality would be a useful thing to consider for future versions of the software. As some of the Design runs can be quite lengthy, it would be very useful to be able to set up several and let them run over night.

Alex

[Michiel Bliemer]

Sounds like a great idea!
The only thing is, when do you know that you have finished with one design? It now runs until you stop it yourself, so an additional stopping criteria will be needed.

What we do ourselves is do multiple runs at the same time and let all of them run overnight. Nowadays, computers have multi-core processors, and Ngene can take advantage of this. So you could just boot up Ngene multiple times and then each Ngene run will use it's own core. In Windows you can even specify which Ngene run uses what processor / core if you like. Of course, if you assign multiple Ngene threads to the same core, it will slow down the other thread that is using the same core. Therefore, it is best to use 2 Ngene runs if you have 2 cores, or 4 Ngene runs if you have 4 cores, etc. This way you will not loose any computation speed and use all the computation power in your computer.

[alex.mitrani]

Michiel,

Thanks for your reply. Good idea - I had not thought about the possibility of setting up parallel runs like that.
Regarding the possibility of sequential batches, I was thinking that the existing syntax system could be made more general to allow several routines in the same syntax file. You are right that each except possibly the last would need a stopping criterion, but Ngene allows this already by specifying
alg; <algorithm name> (stop total(X secs)).
So if the user wanted to leave 5 sequential runs over night they could allocate each about 2 hours of processing time. With multiple processors AND sequential runs, this could enable lots of runs to be done overnight!

Best regards

Alex

[julian]

Hi there,
i just wanted to ask if there are any news on this topic. I would love to run Ngene in batch mode. Not to run it overnight, but to start it from another source (software). This is for example helpful when I want to simulate several experiments with the same model but different designs using different priors. I can use a different software to create 100 ngs files with exactly the same syntax but different prior values and then automatically run the syntax in ngene in batch mode, store the design as asci and then read it in the software to run my simulation.
Thanks already for an answer!
Kind Regards, Julian

[Michiel Bliemer]

Hi Julian,

As far as I am aware, this feature has been implemented already several years ago. You should be able to highlight all syntax in the same syntax window and press run (and of course limit the run time for each syntax). Let me know if you encounter issues.

Michiel