Analysis, design, and results recover times are dependent upon the following hardware characteristics:
- Available memory
- Input/output (I/O)
- Processor speed
- Number of cores
Depending on the type of analysis, some hardware characteristics may have greater impact on analysis and results recovery speed than others.
Hardware requirements for analysis types
This table approximates the hardware demand for various analysis types. I/O intensive analyses tend to benefit from both increased disk speed (fast SSDs directly connected to PCI bus (PCIe) are recommended over regular hard drives (or slower SSDs) connected to SATA interface) and additional RAM. The operating system uses RAM for file caching. The most cost-effective approach to improving software performance is to increase the amount of RAM on 64-bit operating systems, and to run analysis out-of-process. External hard drives are not recommended, and network drives should not be used.
Analysis Type | RAM Memory Demands | I/0 (Disk Access) Demands | Processor Demands |
|---|---|---|---|
Linear static | Moderate | Moderate | Moderate/Multi-core |
Nonlinear static | Moderate | Moderate | Moderate/Multi-core |
Modal (Eigen/Ritz/Buckling) | Moderate | High | Moderate/Multi-core |
Linear modal time-history | Low | Low | High |
Nonlinear modal time-history | Low | Low | High/Multi-core(1) |
Linear direct-integration time-history | Moderate | High | Moderate/Multi-core |
Nonlinear direct-integration time-history | Moderate | High | Moderate/Multi-core |
Influence-based moving-load | Moderate | Moderate | High/Multi-core |
Step-by-step moving-load | High | Moderate | Moderate/Multi-core |
Steady-state | High | Moderate | High |
Power-spectral-density | High | Moderate | High |
Running design | Low | Moderate | High |
Processing section cuts | Low | High | Low |
Comments:
(1) Nonlinear modal time history is parallelized for state determination and results recovery.
See Also
- Solver section
- Parallel processing article
