Hardware

Selecting hardware for CFD can be a time-consuming activity. You need to make sure that the hardware:

• is compatible with your software;
• has an optimal performance/cost ratio;
• is powerful enough to handle to your compute jobs;
• fits your budget.

No wonder that selecting hardware is typically a long process. Now at Trampo, we offer optimal CFD hardware selected by CFD engineers. Optimal because:

• it will suit 90% of CFD engineers
• it is in a sweet spot in terms of performance/cost ratio
• It will give you an excellent place to start if you have no idea what you need.

What is Trampo's hardware selection strategy?

CFD scales well on multi-core processors. The bottleneck usually is the processor/RAM memory bandwidth. So you need:

• the number of processors that your base load computing requires and your budget allows (use supercomputing for large size compute jobs)
• the processors with most memory controllers.
• the fastest available RAM that runs on your processors.

We recommend the following hardware:

Processors:

Best Price/performance  processors :  2x AMD EPYC 7601  (4 memory controllers / processor). 64 cores total. (source: Siemens AG, Spotlight on hardware for HPC, 2018).

Storage :

Saving 500$ on a drive is a false economy: a CFD engineer not only handles large files every day, but is also regularly rebooting his computer and installing new software. Cheaper drives come with lower endurance, meaning they have a higher to chance to fail. How much does a lost productive day costs you?

These are the criteria we look at for in a drive:

• Speed: Spend time being productive, rather than waiting for your files to load, save or install. Get the fastest consumer-grade NVMe SSD. 
• Size: 2 TB enables medium-sized transient and large steady-state simulations to save directly on your workstation.
• RAID:  No need for multiple disks. NVMe SSDs have sufficient capacity and speed. One single hard drive reduces the chances of failure and simplifies workstation maintenance and operation.
• Endurance: Adequate SSD endurance for computer modelling is halfway between low range consumer SSD and high range server SSD. You want to have a drive that has a very high probability to never fail during its life.
• Long term storage: should be done on a backed-up NAS, server or cloud.

Memory:

We recommend 4GB / core ECC RDIMM DDR4 2.6 GHz. If you deal with industrial assemblies, 128 GB RAM is the minimum.

Graphics Card:

A mid-range professional graphics card is sufficient. If you regularly deal with industrial assemblies CAD, VR, or rendering, a high-end graphics card will greatly improve your productivity.