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Important: Most software will only consume 1 CPU core - e.g., requesting 8 CPU cores for a PAUP job blocks other people using the unused 7 CPU cores. Most HPC users will have scripts similar to Example 1 below.

Example 1:

The following PBS script requests 1 CPU core, 2GB of memory, and 24 hours of walltime for the running of "paup -n input.nex".

#!/bin/bash
#PBS -j oe
#PBS -m ae
#PBS -N JobName1
#PBS -l ncpus=1:mem=2gb
#PBS -l walltime=24:00:00
#PBS -M your.name@jcu.edu.au

cd $PBS_O_WORKDIR
shopt -s expand_aliases
source /etc/profile.d/modules.sh
echo "Job identifier is $PBS_JOBID"
echo "Working directory is $PBS_O_WORKDIR"

module load paup
paup -n input.nex

If the file containing the above content has a name of JobName1.pbs, you simply execute qsub JobName1.pbs to place it into the queueing system.

Example 3:

The following PBS script requests 20 CPU cores, 40GB of memory, and 2 days of walltime for running of an MPI job.

#!/bin/bash
#PBS -j oe
#PBS -m ae
#PBS -N JobName3
#PBS -l pmem=2gb
#PBS -l nodes=1:ppn=20
#PBS -l walltime=240:00:00
#PBS -M your.name@my.jcu.edu.au


cd $PBS_O_WORKDIR
shopt -s expand_aliases
source /etc/profile.d/modules.sh
echo "Job identifier is $PBS_JOBID"
echo "Working directory is $PBS_O_WORKDIR"

module load openmpi
module load migrate
mpirun -np 20 -machinefile $PBS_NODEFILE migrate-n-mpi ...

If the file containing the above content has a name of JobName3.pbs, you simply execute qsub JobName3.pbs to place it into the queueing system.

Example 2:

The following PBS script requests 8 CPU cores, 24GB of memory, and 3 hours of walltime for running of 8 MATLAB jobs in parallel.

#!/bin/bash
#PBS -j oe
#PBS -m ae
#PBS -N JobName2
#PBS -l pmem=3gb
#PBS -l nodes=1:ppn=8
#PBS -l walltime=3:00:00
#PBS -M your.name@jcu.edu.au

cd $PBS_O_WORKDIR
shopt -s expand_aliases
source /etc/profile.d/modules.sh
echo "Job identifier is $PBS_JOBID"
echo "Working directory is $PBS_O_WORKDIR"

module load matlab
matlab -r myjob1 &
matlab -r myjob2 &
matlab -r myjob3 &
matlab -r myjob4 &
matlab -r myjob5 &
matlab -r myjob6 &
matlab -r myjob7 &
matlab -r myjob8 &
wait    # Wait for background jobs to finish.

If the file containing the above content has a name of JobName2.pbs, you simply execute qsub JobName2.pbs to place it into the queueing system.

Example 4:

The following PBS script requests uses job arrays. If you aren't proficient with bash scripting, using job arrays could be painful. The example below has each sub-job requesting 1 CPU core, 1 GB of memory, and 20 minutes of walltime.

#!/bin/bash
#PBS -j oe
#PBS -m ae
#PBS -N ArrayJob
#PBS -l pmem=1gb
#PBS -l nodes=1:ppn=1
#PBS -l walltime=20:00
#PBS -M your.name@my.jcu.edu.au

cd $PBS_O_WORKDIR
shopt -s expand_aliases
source /etc/profile.d/modules.sh

module load matlab
matlab -r myjob$PBS_ARRAYID

If the file containing the above content has a name of ArrayJob.pbs and you will be running 32 sub-jobs, you simply use qsub -t 1-32 ArrayJob.pbs to place it into the queueing system.

Brief Details on some extra PBS/Torque directives

Directive(s)	Description of purpose
`#PBS -d <PATH_TO_DIRECTORY>`	Sets the working directory for you job to <PATH>.
`#PBS -o <OUTPUT_FILE_PATH>`	Explicit specification of file that will hold the standard output stream from you job.
`#PBS -V`	Export environment variables to the batch job

For full details on directives that can be used, use "man qsub" on a HPC login node or look at online documentation for Torque.

PBS/Torque Variables

Variable	Description
`PBS_JOBNAME`	Job name specified by the user
`PBS_O_WORKDIR`	Working directory from which the job was submitted
`PBS_O_HOME`	Home directory of user submitting the job
`PBS_O_LOGNAME`	Name of user submitting the job
`PBS_O_SHELL`	Script shell
`PBS_O_JOBID`	Unique PBS job id
`PBS_O_HOST`	Host on which job script is running
`PBS_QUEUE`	Name of the job queue
`PBS_NODEFILE`	File containing line delimited list on nodes allocated to the job
`PBS_O_PATH`	Path variable used to locate executables within the job script

Example CPU+Memory Resource Requests

Your requirements
CPU cores	Total Memory	PBS/Torque options
1	1200 MB	`-l nodes=1:ppn=1 -l pmem=1200mb`
1	20 GB	`-l nodes=1:ppn=1 -l pmem=20gb`
2	6 GB	`-l nodes=1:ppn=2 -l pmem=3gb`
8	4 GB	`-l nodes=1:ppn=8 -l pmem=512mb`
24	120 GB	`-l nodes=1:ppn=24 -l pmem=5gb`

The most important thing to note is that the pmem parameter is physical memory per core that your job requires.