Itasca Consulting Group engineers run their models on “crunchers,” which are powerful PC computers. Our IT team currently (as of October 2021) defines the following system configurations as crunchers. These are only general recommendations, as Mainboard Bios versions and other software/firmware will affect the systems performance. For more information about hardware, visit the hardware FAQ on our website.
Custom Spec/Built Intel-based System:
Intel i9 9980xe, 18 Core/36 thread CPU
ASUS Prime X299-A II LGA 2066 Intel X299 SATA 6Gb/s ATX Intel Motherboard
2, 64 GB kits of: G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 64GB (4 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3600 (PC4 28800) Desktop Memory Model F4-3600C16Q-64GVKC GB of Crucial 3200 mhz DDR4 RAM.
A 2 TB NvMe Solid State Drive (the Corsair MP600 Core M.2 2280 2TB PCIe Gen 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.3 3D QLC Internal Solid-State Drive (SSD) CSSD-F2000GBMP600COR has worked well)
An 8 or 10 TB 7200 RPM, 256 MB of Cache Storage Hard drive
EVGA CLC 360 400-HY-CL36-V1 All-In-One CPU Liquid Cooler
A EVGA GeForce 1050 Ti or GTX 1650 (or better) Video Card
A 850 Watt “Gold” Evga or Seasonic Power Supply
A Mid Tower case that accepts the 3 Fan water cools (360mm) radiator. (Phanteks Enthoo Pro Series PH-ES614P_BK Computer Case has worked well)
Windows 10 Pro
Custom Spec/Built AMD-based System:
AMD ThreadRipper 3970x CPU with 32 cores/64 threads
ASUS PRIME TRX40-PRO S sTRX4 AMD TRX40 SATA 6Gb/s ATX AMD Motherboard
2, 64 GB kits of: G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 64GB (4 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3600 (PC4 28800) Desktop Memory Model F4-3600C16Q-64GVKC GB of Crucial 3200 mhz DDR4 RAM Kits
A 2 TB NvMe Solid State Drive (the Corsair MP600 Core M.2 2280 2TB PCIe Gen 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.3 3D QLC Internal Solid-State Drive (SSD) CSSD-F2000GBMP600COR has worked well)
A 8 or 10 TB 7200 RPM, 256 MB of Cache Storage Hard drive
EVGA CLC 360 400-HY-CL36-V1 All-In-One CPU Liquid Cooler
A EVGA GeForce 1050 Ti or GTX 1650 (or better) Video Card
A 850 Watt “Gold” Evga or Seasonic Power Supply
A Mid Tower case that accepts the 3 Fan water cools (360mm) radiator. (Phanteks Enthoo Pro Series PH-ES614P_BK Computer Case has worked well)
Windows 10 Pro
Laptop System:
As far as a “Laptop cruncher” we recommend that for heavy duty “Crunching” that you use a desktop system as Laptops just don’t have the CPU/Power/Cores or the 128 of RAM Capacity that you can get with the x299 Intel Mainboard spec.
However, we do have some of our engineers using this Dell XPS 9510 laptop spec for smaller models that need 64 GB of RAM or less:
Dell XPS 15 9000 Series-9510
64GB DDR4-3200MHz, 2x32G
11th Generation Intel i9-119000H CPU (24MB Cache, up to 4.9 GHz, 8 cores)
2TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD
Windows 10 professional
NVIDIA GeForce RTX-3050TI
While we are currently running the machine configurations listed above in a production environment, and they are working well, this information is provided only as an example of any of 100’s possible configurations, and therefore is provided only “as is”.
NOTE: XMP Setting in BIOS for memory overclock.
FLAC3D 9.00.161 and FLAC 7.00.159
THM problem (config T & H)
Operators run at maximum CPU
Thermal runs at maximum CPU (set mech, flow off)
Flow runs at maximum CPU (set mech, thermal off)
Mech runs at 5% of CPU (set hydro, thermal off)
ISSUE w MECH Solver when raising clock on memory about default values. Tested on two of these identical systems only.
Hi @Theophile. The Linux version isn’t necessarily any faster. Although you can see a number of benchmark tests for both Windows and Linux machines one our Benchmark site, or even run your own.
We’ve added Linux in order to eventually support cluster computing (modeling one model across several machines); with the added benefit of supporting academic institutions who are currently running Linux systems. Plus Linux is a less expensive OS than Windows for cloud computing applications.
@ddegagne A more philosophical question: why don’t you make a macOS version? I recently ran some MODFLOW tests comparing my Windows mini “cruncher”, and it was outperformed by an M4 MacBook Air.
ITASCA doesn’t focus on MacOS mainly because mining, civil, and energy engineers are primarily Windows-based users investing in high-end PC “crunchers” or server clusters. ITASCA software visualizers and GUIs rely heavily on OpenGL for 3D rendering, which Apple has deprecated, and ITASCA codes are highly optimized for 64-bit Intel/AMD (x86_64) processors, utilizing specific instruction sets for multi-threading and high-performance computing (HPC).
ITASCA has introduced Linux (Ubuntu) support primarily to facilitate cluster computing and cloud-based “headless” simulations (like on AWS or Azure), where Linux is the dominant operating system and the hardware tends to be less expensive. ITASCA does have a Linux Container version used for Cloud computing or non-Ubuntu Linux systems.
ITASCA’s license agreement does not technically “prohibit” running the software on a Mac via workarounds, but we do not currently optimize development for MacOS or provide technical support for any issues that arise on non-supported platforms.
I’ll pass along your observation to our software development team. Thanks for you question.