[Mauiusers] requesting 16 cpus on entire nodes as opposed to fragmented

[Rahul Nabar]

We have nodes with 8 cores each. Often users submit jobs with a
request for nodes=2:ppn=8.

Getting full nodes is generally the desirable goal but not a necessary
one; jobs spanning multiple partial nodes will run correctly but a bit
slower. But in case cpus are lying empty then I'd rather allot 16
processors wherever they might be rather than wait for two full nodes
to free up keeping capacity idle in the process.

Is there a "soft" and "hard" way of designing the request so that maui
will give me full nodes on a "best effort" basis yet sometimes hand
out fragmented cpus in the interest of not keeping resources idle?

-- 
Rahul