Quad core processors
Quad core processors
(OP)
I am considering buying a workstation with with two quad core processors. I use ABAQUS software. Will it be equal to buying 8 single processors. Pleas give me your comments.
Thanks,
Gurmeet
Thanks,
Gurmeet





RE: Quad core processors
TTFN
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
RE: Quad core processors
Cheers
Greg Locock
SIG:Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
RE: Quad core processors
But as Greg hinted, you will need a bucket full of license tokens to be able to do this !! How many tokens do you have, currently use on jobs?
For your new workstation, I'd suggest going 64bit (with XP64 if using windows - NOT Vista !) and at least 8Gb of ram, so that solutions can be run without paging to disc.
RE: Quad core processors
RE: Quad core processors
Our IT group only wants to support Windows. However my current workstation has SUSE Linux and I am very happy with ABAQUS on Linux. Does anyone have experience with ABAQUS on 64 bit windows? How would one compare performance of ABAQUS on Windows vs. Linux?
ABAQUS have also informed me that they also give extra tokens on monthly rate. I am leaning towards buying the computer with 8 cores, but lease only enough tokens for 4 cores (8 tokens). Whenever I have a bigger job, I can rent the extra tokens. One quad core processor costs about $1800.
Looking forward to your comments.
Thanks,
Gurmeet
RE: Quad core processors
You need to do this on the specific machine your interested in using. I did a benchmark (not Abaqus but non-linear FEA)that showed that Linux was faster than Win64 on dual core machines when both cores on a physical chipset were being used. Something to do with the bus speed on the chip maybe and why I would stay away from quad cores. Other bechmarks with other codes don't show the problem bwteen OSs.
Can you lease a machine with a buy option afterwards to test the performance They you can dual boot and test performance on your problems. This is important as my problems are mainly contact and perform differently to the vendors tests.
RE: Quad core processors
As a vague example 5e5 dof runs in 1.5 gb of RAM.
Cheers
Greg Locock
SIG:Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
RE: Quad core processors
However, an algorithm that can happily thrash on the same few data bits for a long time should get a processing boost in a quad-core.
TTFN
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
RE: Quad core processors