[OpendTect_Users] Is My Computer Good/Fast Enough?

[Bert Bril]

Hi,


I just answered an e-mail about this subject. Here's a reworked version 
of the answer, just because it may be interesting for some of you.


It all depends on what you think is acceptable performance. And on how 
much work there is for OpendTect. If you have mega-surveys with 
Tera-bytes of data, and you want to do very advanced calculations, then 
you'll need the best you can get. What is best? The main idea is to 
minimize the bottlenecks:

1) Graphics
Use nVidia or maybe ATI-based cards. At least these manufacturers have 
good drivers for all cards. For nVidia, you may want to avoid the 
'professional' series. This can be a waste of money (but may just give 
you that little bit extra you want, too). In doubt, buy the top gaming 
card(s) you can find.

2) CPU
Choose 64 bits. Many processors, high speeds. The more the better. 
OpendTect will automatically use multiple threads in many situations. It 
depends on the type of attribute, display, etc. but we put a lot of 
effort in getting time-consuming tasks multi-threaded. We are well aware 
that the number of processors will grow steadily.

3) Memory
Buy as much memory as you can afford (and that will fit in the 
computer). The big clients for example use nothing less than 64 GB. 
OpendTect doesn't have a lot of tricks to minimize memory consumption; 
we figure that memory gets cheaper by the day so we greedily use memory 
for our purposes (we try to not waste it, though).

4) Hard disks
This is usually under-valued, but it's very often the crucial 
performance component. RAID can speed up disks considerably. If you can, 
work on local disks. I've seen many examples of the total performance 
being miserable just because the data needed to stream through 
(relatively) slow networks.


It's clear that the number of variables is huge, and that it's simply 
very difficult to predict whether a certain configuration will be good 
enough for your specific needs.


Bert

-- 
-- Bert Bril / OpendTect developer at dGB
-- mailto:Bert.Bril at opendtect.org , http://opendtect.org