Today I was given the task of designing one computer for our lab that will run our model awesomely for the next four years and a budget of about $2500.00 to get it. OSU will order it with their other stuff so shipping is not an issue. The interesting thing is that the model is actually going to start to run on a computers GPU (not CPU!) within the next year. And am I surprised to say that this model was designed at GA Tech-- where all the good starcraft players went, I hear. However, old versions of the model can still be run on the CPU.
Of course I contacted the guy who runs the model and he told me sort of what kind of motherboard and stuff we would need, but he also suggested we get a laptop so we can take it to the field.
I am a little skeptical of that-- it doesn't seem like you can fit lots of awesome into a laptop as you could in a PC.
If I had my druthers, I would get us a nice PC for about 1500 including a giant monitor for the main model and a smaller one for a secondary model. Then I would get us a nice laptop and another monitor for about 1000.00. The PC would run the model and simulations, and the laptop would go to the field and run there. I think I could do this well, considering we get almost all software in our lab for free (MatLab, SAS, ArcGIS, you name it), but I think the assignment is one computer.
Obviously I am kind of a tool and know very little about this, but since I'm the finance one I've somehow fallen into this role. Hmmm. Suggestions are welcome...
As for the model intensity, it took them (on a quad core intel) a full day to run the last simulation with the iterations between periods being parsed by days. Subordinate 2 (I got another one!) and I will need to parse by hours, and maybe minutes, to do what we want to do (we want to layer in this particular c14 data we're taking to track cold carbon through the air during nightfall)... so we need some POWER,
No comments:
Post a Comment