Hello here!
I am wondering if anyone here have an idea about Engineers workstation. For those who don't know Engineers, especially Mechanical, Civil, or even Aerospace need some sort of reliable machine, as they usually work with CAD software, Analysis and Simulation applications as well. And talking about simulations, those are the beast. In general, they need so much from the processor to be able to run. In the industry they mostly use super-computers for those. Even at school, students and professors use the super-computer for that.
Now, here is where i am asking for help. I am not trying to build an entire room of computer in my house but I am thinking of putting together what I call a decent workstation. Even if my built one will take few days to run the simulation that could be run with school super-computer in maybe 24 hours, I will be perfectly fine with that.
Oh by the way, I got on this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Tyudcr1uLY) and I really like it. My concern is that this design is more toward video editing and all that which, if I am not mistaking, requires more of memory and graphic while mine will require processor instead, on top of the memory.
Sorry I was really long. Thank you in advance for any input. Thanks guys for the video, as this already gave me some ideas. Thanks a lot.
Funny you should mention this..
Super computers are made up of large clusters of servers. You're saying you want your machine to be a 3rd/4th the speed of a super computer?
Considering most super computers , even small schools ones are a room of servers , you'll need at least one or two server racks to achieve that
Whatever you end up building , will be several times slower than even a low end school cluster , like 50 or more times slower.
Oh, I agree. And if you read my post again I said some like even if it will take few days for me to do what the school's super computer get done in 24 hours, so doing the math it comes down to even less than the twentieth of the power of a super computer. Thanks for your input.
If you had the money, maybe you should invest in a blade server or a GPU farm depending on your situation.
Yes , and I'm telling you expect it to take a month , not a few days.
If you have 50 machines take 24 hours , then 1 machine of the same calibur will take 50 days to process the same data.
That's provided the machine has the same amount of ram as the other 50 machines. Otherwise it'll be even longer.
Man, I love you guys!
I wish I stayed in computer science and did not switch to something else.
Do you think it is possible to go for at least 12 cores per CPU, and between 128 and 256 in RAM?
Thanks again for your input.
What do you think will be a good example of blade server of GPU farm?
What I am asking is do you have any model that you came across before, so that I can get a better idea?
Thank you.
Hmmm!!! Ok I see what you were saying. But I really don't think it will take that long. We tried it before and the project we were working on, we tried the simulation on a gaming asus laptop and it took well over a week to complete and the same project only took 21 hours to the school computer. So yes you are absolutely right but i am thinking it's probably about the size of the project or the work you want to accomplish as well.
Thank you again for your help.
Well GPU farm would be any system that has enough PCI-e I/O to support at least 4 graphics cards. I'd look at stuff from Supermicro if you wanted to build an 8U rack with 4 2U systems in it that supported 4 graphics cards each. Even Supermicro's blade stuff or dual/quad socket motherboards are pretty stout. It all just depends on how much you are willing to spend, you could build a couple of dual/quad socket 2U CPU systems and link them up with a super fast 10 Gb/s LAN to your primary workstation for a few thousand dollars if you bought used parts.
http://www.titancomputers.com/category-s/706.htm
You might want to take a look at Titanus to get a more exact idea of what you want.
Price no object? Maybe something like this.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/9LVL8d
You would still NEED a RAID card capable of RAID 5, an OS, and peripherals. The BR drive is for hard backups, remove it if you would be using external or network backups
The ssd is for the OS and as a scratch disk, the 4 hdd's are for a RAID 5 array
Dual gpu will depend on useage - if you dont need 2 lose one of them and get a smaller PSU
This is stupidly expensive however you look at it though.
Thanks for the input.
Thank you.
Thanks for your help.