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Trying to understand WolframKernel processes licensing

Posted 19 days ago

I'm trying to understand how the licensing works with Mathematica 14.1 -- I look at my account info and it says this license has 2 controlling and 4 computing processes maximum.

So when I start up Mathematica on a macOS 15.1.1 system (Mac mini M2 Pro with 6 high performance cores and 4 efficiency cores) I see there are now two WolframKernel processes started when looking at the Activity Monitor window showing all processes on the system.

So I then created two pre-defined kernels in the Evaluation/KernelConfigurationOptions menu and named the kernels - kernel1 and kernel2.

I then created a new notebook with one line

PerfectNumber[22]

which I then assign kernel1 to and then run it.

I then look at Activity Monitor and see another WolframKernel process has now started and is using 100% of the cpu/core it's been assigned to.

So the first question is why didn't one of the already existing WolframKernel processes start handling this notebook?? Exactly what could I have done differently to prevent the third WolframKernel process to have started and instead one of the already existing WolframKernel processes to be using a CPU core to run? Is there some way to find out which WolframKernel process is being used on a particular running Notebook??

But, if I then click on the "About Mathematica" menu, I see all the info about Mathetica as expected, and then try and click on the "Copy" button to copy the license number to the paste buffer, but I get a popup error window about the number of licenses has been exceeded. But I thought the number of WolframKernel processes limit was 4 - so why the error??

Have I exceeded the Controlling limit of 2 or the computing limit of 4? Are WolframKernel processes able to be both a controlling process and a computing process?? From the Activity Monitor window how can you differentiate between the two?

What exactly does Mathemitica consider a "controlling" process and what is considered a "computing" process???

I was hoping to be able to have four notebooks able to be running at the same time and each of them being assigned to a different core cpu processor. Is this not how things are supposed to work??

Thanks...

-bob

POSTED BY: Bob Freeman
2 Replies

Well, another thing I tried is to run "wolframscript' (the command-line interface from a Terminal window) at the same time I had Wolfram running - but it won't let you and gives a license limit exceeded error window. if the limit were really 2 controlling processes, seems like Wolfram/Mathematica in one notebook would get one and there would still be one left over to do another "wolframscript" in a Terminal window - but that's not apparently possible...

So this whole license question is one rather obnoxious way of limiting what you can do in a really obnoxioius way. Seems like a whole lot of work to subvert using the software on your computer in ways that are not easy to anticipate. Wolfram sure goes out of their way to make it difficult to use rather than easy.

-bob

POSTED BY: Bob Freeman

A somewhat simplified explanation: The controlling process limit is the number of user facing kernels. You can create as many named local kernel configurations as you want, but you can only use "x" of them at the same time. The GUI starts two kernels when it starts up (by default). One is "Local" and is the default evaluator for notebooks in a session. The other is a helper kernel. You cannot directly run evaluations on it, but it also doesn't count against your process limit.

The computing process limit is basically for all of the Parallel functionality. ParallelMap, etc...

POSTED BY: Ian Hojnicki
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