[EnergyPlus_Support] Re: E+ System Requirements

["Z. Todd Taylor" <todd.taylor@xxxxxxx>]

In general, the best thing you can do for a laptop is make sure it has
adequate memory and AS FAST A DISK as you can afford.  Laptop disks
are notoriously slow; I'll take a 7200-rpm that's half the size of a
5400-rpm any day.

That said, E+ is almost always CPU-bound.  CPU performance doesn't
scale directly with GHz, especially across processor lines.  There is
virtually no way to compare the new dual-core processors with their
single-core predecessors based on GHz.  There's not even much useful
correspondence between Intel's various dual-core processor lines.

We make good use of multicore processors by running multiple instances
of E+ simultaneously.  Not all workloads will benefit from that, of
course, and you do have to take manual steps to avoid E+'s penchant
for clobbering its own intermediate files. 

--Todd
-- 
Why are they called 'long shorts'?



--- In EnergyPlus_Support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Crawley, Drury"
<Drury.Crawley@...> wrote:
>
> While EnergyPlus is single-threaded code, it does help to move to a
> dual-core.  Faster hard drive and more memory helps more than CPU clock
> speed.  I moved from a single CPU, 1.8 GHz, 1 GB memory laptop to a dual
> core, 1.2 GHz, 2 GB laptop -- and it ran E+ twice as fast.
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> From: EnergyPlus_Support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:EnergyPlus_Support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of JRR
> Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 1:00 PM
> To: EnergyPlus_Support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [EnergyPlus_Support] E+ System Requirements
> 
> 
> 
> JRR wrote;
> 
> Energy Plus is single threaded code. I understand from monitoring the
> mailing lists and
> responses over  the last 3+ years that it is mostly FORTRAN or rewritten
> FORTRAN
> with object oriented constructs.  As such a dual core CPU will help some
> but not a lot.
> 
> The best machine to get in our opinion is a  roughly 3 year old  XEON
> with dual CPU
> sockets on the motherboard. The motherboard will be a 533 or 667 Mhz
> board with
> DDR-333 memory sticks. The outstanding part is that the XEON  HT CPUs
> came in
> 3.2 Ghz, 3.6 Ghz, and 3.8 Ghz. versions. The Intel SE7525GP2 motherboard
> has
> PCI express x16 graphics card slot,  2x PCI 64, 3x PCI 32, 2x ATA-100
> and 2x SATA I.
> There is an onboard hardware RAID chip that has drivers for both Windows
> XP Pro and
> Linux. That means you can have a dual boot, dual RAID system.....
> 
> We are currently running an Adaptec 29160 SCSI card with a Seagate Ultra
> SCSI 
> Cheetah 10k RPM as the boot disk. We have dual LG DVD+- RW drives with
> each one
> set to different regions.  Both SuSE Linux 11.0 and Win XP Pro show 4
> cores running at
> 3.6+ Ghz.  The drawback is heat. A 650W power supply will just barely
> boot our system,
> and the CPUs  reject  130W EACH at stock speed.  All this takes some
> considerable 
> effort to run.
> 
> A simple, rugged and effective machine would be an Intel DP35DP
> motherboard, Core 2
> Duo CPU at 3.0 Ghz,  2GB or 4GB memory, 2x SATA 2 hard disk, 2x DVD+-
> RW,
> floppy drive, NVIDIA Quadro 1700 PCIe video card.  Get a chassis with
> lots of room - 
> mid-tower or full tower and a 400 w + power supply.  Microsoft is still
> selling Win XP Pro
> to small independent computer shops for another 6 ? weeks, but has
> already stopped 
> supply to larger Computer sellers, at least in the US.  Now you have a
> machine with 
> XP Pro, Vista ( if you really want to ) and SuSE Linux operating system
> choices.
> The Quadro 1700 video card supports the 'CUDA project bringing 192
> parallel GPUs
> to the compute side of the machine in the next year.....
> 
> 
> Yuen Liu wrote: 
> 
> 	
> 	I can confirm that the EPlus Ver.2.2 can run on WindowsME with
> 64MB RAM and a Pentium I 166MHz processor, because  I am still using
> such an antique.
> 	 
> 	However, the speed is about 2 sec. per line of calculation.  To
> do a 4 timestep, 2  DesignDays simulation will take about  2 X 4 x 24 x
> 2 sec. = 384 sec.  That is, about 7 minutes to run a typical 5Z example.
> 
> 	 
> 	It would take less than 30 seconds on the 1.6GHz PC.  RAM size
> and dual core do not seem to make much difference in processing speed.
> 	 
> 	If you are just starting, a slow PC is still workable.  You will
> generate the complete set of files for the DesignDays simulation and get
> the feel of running the simulation and study the results.  You can read
> the PDF document files and print the relavent topics with a slow PC.  
> 	 
> 	EPlus will run from WIndows'98SE  to Windows Vista, PC OS.
> 	 
> 	Dr. Li
> 	
> 	
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> 	To: EnergyPlus_Support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 	From: leeed2001@...
> 	Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:35:45 -0600
> 	Subject: Re: [EnergyPlus_Support] E+ System Requirements
> 	
> 	
> 
> 	I don't know that there is a hard set of requirements or
> recommendations, but here is my experience:
> 	
> 	For running single simulations at a time, my 3 yr old laptop w/
> 1.66GHz single core processor and 1GB RAM runs just fine.
> 	My work laptop where I constantly run dual simulations
> concurrently has a dual core processor and 3GB RAM and does quite nice
> for me.
> 	
> 	I think it is fair to say that E+ won't be affected by the
> graphics engine, as it is solely a command line engine.  However, if you
> are going to run a GUI such as DesignBuilder than you may want to look
> at the specific GUI recommendations.
> 	
> 	Edwin
> 	
> 	
> 
> 	On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 9:19 PM, pohkhai84 <ng_khai@...
> <mailto:ng_khai@...> > wrote:
> 	
> 
> 		Dear All,
> 		
> 		I am intending to download E+ and learn it to do some
> energy 
> 		simulations. Before I download into my computer, is
> there any where I 
> 		can find the minimum system requirement that is required
> in order for 
> 		E+ to run smoothly (ie. CPU speed, ram, graphics,
> etc)... I am hoping 
> 		that my laptop of 3 years is able to run E+ smoothly. If
> not, I might 
> 		have to rely on my desktop at home instead.
> 		
> 		Thanks! :)
> 		
> 		
> 		
> 
> 		
> 
> 
> 
> 	
> 	
> ________________________________
> 
> 	Visit messengerbuddies.ca to find out how you could win. Enter
> today. <http://www.messengerbuddies.ca/?ocid=BUDDYOMATICENCA20>
>



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