[Virtual-sim] Apache Engine and Multicore Processors

[Simon Chilvers]

We only have the one network license here so that a no go.  I literally and forced down the route of doing a simulation in one chunk.

 

Largest Model I've built and run recently would be a Mixed Use Development in Croydon, London, UK. 

 

58 storey building, 11 floors of simple open plan office space, 13 floor 180 bed hotel and associated dining/drinking/leisure space and residential tower with Penthouses on top.  In all it totalled 4500 thousand individual zones and a VE Compliance (Notional and Actual + Suncasts) took 4-5 days!!

 

A lot of this was taken up with Suncast... there was a very very complex curved fin arrangement around the façade with protuding balconies and winter gardens on the residential floors.

 

http://www.skyscrapernews.com/buildings.php?id=5701

 

Simon

 

 

 

________________________________

From: Lopez, Phylroy [mailto:Phylroy.Lopez at stantec.com] 
Sent: 05 August 2010 17:34
To: Simon Chilvers; virtual-sim at lists.onebuilding.org
Subject: RE: [Virtual-sim] Apache Engine and Multicore Processors

 

 

You could effectively split the simulation by dividing the the calender year by # of cpus.. You'll have to manually aggregate the  data however and allow reasonable startup / warmup period. The catch is..You'll need a licence for each run... :(

I've automated this for Energyplus to make runtime very fast using scripts (up to 8x faster) , but IES does not allow scripts. 

Other than that.. fastest clockspeed would be my first choice and a RAID array configuration to increase disk I/O... that is about it.



-----Original Message-----
From: virtual-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org on behalf of Simon Chilvers
Sent: Thu 05/08/2010 8:58 AM
To: virtual-sim at lists.onebuilding.org
Subject: [Virtual-sim]  Apache Engine and Multicore Processors

Looking at purchasing a standalone PC to sit separate from our work network and run our Simulations on as quickly and efficiently as possible.



Due to ApacheSim currently not taking advantage of multithreading or multi-core processors, what would be the most effective hardware setup?



IES seem to think that 32bit and 64bit machines in regards to the VE suite operate comparably, with the only advantage being the ability to have more than 2 GB of RAM on a 64bit system, which I can only think is an advantage when running Microflo simulations (something that we do not do here as we do not have a license.



Therefore I assume I need to look at a processor with the biggest core size.



Any pointers?



Simon



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