Building a PC for Fire Dynamic Simulator (FDS) modelling use

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  SBOB on 14/10/2021 - 18:20

  +3

  Thought about doing this kind of modelling in the cloud instead? Results in hours instead of days.

  Eg https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/fire-dynamics-simulatio…

  • 

    N82 on 14/10/2021 - 22:45

    wow. thanks for that. I didnt know Amazon would offer such service. I will definitely keep that in mind for big projects.

• 

  AndyC1 on 14/10/2021 - 18:22

  Have you thought about using the FDS MPI? (using a dedicated 1GB network for the MPI)

  This could depending on the component prices a way of buying more overall CPU power at a cheaper price. You may want to visit the FDS forums and ask about it.

  You may also want to check if there are any builds of FDS that offload the processing to a GPU as this may speed up the simulation, but with today's GPU prices it may end up costing more.

  Some things to think about.

• 

  Drakesy on 14/10/2021 - 18:34

  +3

  I would imagine you are definitely going to need a better graphics card.

  Even if it is heaps of calculations when i was doing drainage modelling our PC's relied very heavily on our graphics cards (we were running NVidia titans at $4-$6k a pop) as the software could be setup to utilise the graphics card. The graphics cards effectively paid for themselves in saved simulation time.

  Nowadays equivalent computing power could probably be had for $1000 or a 3070 RTX

• 

  Switchblade88 on 14/10/2021 - 20:38

  -1

  Welcome to OzHelpDesk.

  Go back to whoever is providing your FDS software and actually read the requirements.

  No point buying a cheap GPU if all the workload is on GPU CUDA cores. Likewise, if it is RAM intensive then 32Gb may well not be enough.

  Since you've not provided enough info about your needs, we're stabbing in the dark, as are you.

  • 

    N82 on 14/10/2021 - 22:55

    +1

    There is very little info regarding hardware requirements. I'm not sure if a better graphic card would help. what will be your recomendation for a 'better' one without breakign the bank? Also, regarding the RAM, i have opted for 64GB (4 x 16GB).

    From the Manual:
    Hardware requirements:

    FDS requires one or more fast CPUs and a substantial amount of random-access memory (RAM) to run efficiently. For minimum specifications, the system should have at least a 1 GHz CPU, and 1 GB RAM. The CPU speed will determine how long the computation will take to finish, while the amount of RAM will determine how many mesh cells can be held in memory.

    1 GB RAM can hold around 106 cells. To understand the physical meaning, a 20 m x 10 m x 5 m computational domain contains 106 cells, when discretized with cubic cells of 10 cm side.

    A large hard drive is required to store the output of the calculations. It is not unusual for the output of a single calculation to consume many gigabytes of storage space.

    Smokeview needs an OpenGL graphics card. Look for graphics cards that specifically list OpenGL support for the operating system you intend to use.

    Serial and parallel calculations:

    FDS can perform serial and parallel calculations:

    Serial calculations are performed in a single process that uses only one core of current multi-core CPUs.

    Parallel calculation splits the computational burden on many processes that can be assigned to many different cores or CPUs. These CPUs can reside on a single workstation or in a cluster of networked computers.

    Setting up a cluster of computers is a complex task and it is out of the scope of this manual.