Recommendations on Workstation Specs

MATIAS JIMENEZ
MATIAS JIMENEZ Altair Community Member
edited February 2023 in Community Q&A

Hello everyone,

Our research group is looking to buy a workstation for the department and we want to make sure that we are getting the hardware we need. We perform both 2D and 3D electromagnetics simulations and in different problems definitions (steady-state-, transient, etc.) and possibly multiphysics coupling. We got an offer with the specification in the list below. Since we have limited budget, the specifications of the offer are enough to perform the simulations without major inconvinients? 

What else you would recommend, or what should we change to maximize the performance (without getting to far from the price range of the hardware in the offer)? 

Specs: 

  • CPU: Intel core i9-10920X 3.5/4.8 GHz (12 cores - 4 channels)
  • Memory: 64 GB (4 x 16 GB) - DDR4 SDRAM - (up to 256 GB)
  • Storage: SSD 1TB PCI Express - M.2 (for running simulation softwares) + 4 TB SATA enterprise 7200 rpm
  • GPU: Nvidia T1000, 4GB
  • Windows 10 Pro for Workstation (Can be upgraded to windows 11)

Thank you in advance.

Matias

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Answers

  • Adriano_Koga
    Adriano_Koga
    Altair Employee
    edited February 2023

    You can find hardware recommendations in the help, at least generically speaking.

    Generally speaking I believe mostly RAM memory and processor affect a lot your computation capacity, concerning the model size and computation speed. 64GB is ok, for most of the models, but may get outdated, after sometime, so having space for future upgrades would be nice. Concernin processor, it looks great, with 12 core's. Jus tmake sure you have enough licenses to use all of them. Flux uses 30AUs for up to 4 core's. 35AUs for up to 8 core's and 40AUs for up to 16 core's, which would be your case.

    SSD will be an important ally on speed-up.

    If handling large models, maybe your graphic card could be one that has more memory, but I believe 4GB is ok already for now.

     

    image

  • MATIAS JIMENEZ
    MATIAS JIMENEZ Altair Community Member
    edited February 2023

    Hello Adriano,

    Thank you very much for your reply.

    About the CPU and number of cores, what do you mean by "Just make sure you have enough licenses to use all of them"?. Can you provide more information about the AUs you mentioned in the reply?.

    Also, how do you estimate the number of DOF in Flux?

    Thanks again.

    Matias

  • Adriano_Koga
    Adriano_Koga
    Altair Employee
    edited February 2023
    MATIAS JIMENEZ said:

    Hello Adriano,

    Thank you very much for your reply.

    About the CPU and number of cores, what do you mean by "Just make sure you have enough licenses to use all of them"?. Can you provide more information about the AUs you mentioned in the reply?.

    Also, how do you estimate the number of DOF in Flux?

    Thanks again.

    Matias

    running an application with multiple core's uses more licenses, according to the document in the help, below.

    I'm not Flux especialist, but the number of DOFs of your model is usually given by the number of nodes in your model multiplied by the number of DOFs for each node.

    I assume Flux calculates currents for each node, maybe in each direction. Maybe 3DOF per node. Honestly I don't know.

    But assuming there are 3 DOFs per node, and you have 100k nodes, it would be 300k DOFs total. This will define the matrix size to be solved, thus the amount of memory to be used by the solver.

    image

    https://help.altair.com/hwdesktop/altair_help/topics/getting_started/unit_draw_solvers_r.htm?zoom_highlight=draw

  • MATIAS JIMENEZ
    MATIAS JIMENEZ Altair Community Member
    edited February 2023
    Adriano A. Koga_21884 said:

    running an application with multiple core's uses more licenses, according to the document in the help, below.

    I'm not Flux especialist, but the number of DOFs of your model is usually given by the number of nodes in your model multiplied by the number of DOFs for each node.

    I assume Flux calculates currents for each node, maybe in each direction. Maybe 3DOF per node. Honestly I don't know.

    But assuming there are 3 DOFs per node, and you have 100k nodes, it would be 300k DOFs total. This will define the matrix size to be solved, thus the amount of memory to be used by the solver.

    image

    https://help.altair.com/hwdesktop/altair_help/topics/getting_started/unit_draw_solvers_r.htm?zoom_highlight=draw

    Hello Adriano,

    Thank you so much for your reply, it was really helpful. have a nice day.

    Best regards,

    Matias

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