I am beginning a PhD program and am buying a new laptop. I will primarily be running geotechnical models in OpenSees, but also integrated geotechnical/structural models (not sure if that's the right terminology yet, sorry).
Anybody have any laptop suggestions? What are the minimum specs for good performance of the program? Does it require a lot of computing power relative to other engineering programs (e.g., SAP, GeoStudio, AutoCAD, etc.).
Thanks,
Ben
New laptop suggestions for running OpenSees?
Moderators: silvia, selimgunay, Moderators
Re: New laptop suggestions for running OpenSees?
just as with any of the apps you mentioned, for continnuum models you want as much memory and as fast a disk (think solid state) as
you can afford. processor speed while important, is secondary, if you are running large models as you want to limit page faults and when
they occur or you write files to disk you want this to occur as fast as possible. while OpenSees can utilize multiple cores, not all of the
ones mentioned can.
of course by the time you are done with the program if you are still using the laptop to do your calculations you will need a good kick somewhere.
you should by then have realized that you should be doing all your computational work on high performance computers through the cloud and the only thing you should
be using the laptop for is editing files and submitting jobs. so in selecting your laptop now make sure it has a nice screen and a well layed out keyboard.
for all the above reasons i would choose a 15inch macbook pro with a retina display (as a disclaimer i must admit to owning apple stock!)
to get you started:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Unix-Hardware-Buy ... imize.html
http://arstechnica.com/information-tech ... ally-work/
you can afford. processor speed while important, is secondary, if you are running large models as you want to limit page faults and when
they occur or you write files to disk you want this to occur as fast as possible. while OpenSees can utilize multiple cores, not all of the
ones mentioned can.
of course by the time you are done with the program if you are still using the laptop to do your calculations you will need a good kick somewhere.
you should by then have realized that you should be doing all your computational work on high performance computers through the cloud and the only thing you should
be using the laptop for is editing files and submitting jobs. so in selecting your laptop now make sure it has a nice screen and a well layed out keyboard.
for all the above reasons i would choose a 15inch macbook pro with a retina display (as a disclaimer i must admit to owning apple stock!)
to get you started:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Unix-Hardware-Buy ... imize.html
http://arstechnica.com/information-tech ... ally-work/