Menu

Discussion Forum

New Discussion
Filter

Discussion Closed This discussion was created more than 6 months ago and has been closed. To start a new discussion with a link back to this one, click here.

COMSOL 4.3b running slow on new 12 core Mac Pro - why?

Posted Apr 9, 2015, 7:23 p.m. EDT Low-Frequency Electromagnetics 1 Reply

Michael Pinneo
Send Private Message Flag post as spam

Please login with a confirmed email address before reporting spam

We just bought a new Mac Pro 2.7GHz 12 core Xeon system with 32GB of RAM so we could run our models faster. We installed COMSOL 4.3b on the new system, enabled 12 cores in preferences. We didn't see much reduction in run time on the Mac Pro.

We tested the 3D Rotating Machinery model from the AC/DC Module on the new Mac Pro and on a MacBook Pro Retina with a 2.5 GHz 4-core i7 processor and 16GB RAM, 4 cores selected in COMSOL preferences on the laptop. Both systems run OS X 10.10.2 (Yosemite).

The Mac Pro ran the model only 10% faster than the laptop, which pretty much mimics the difference we see with our in-house models. This is such a minimal increase in performance that we think we must be doing something wrong. Any ideas for getting better performance out of the Mac Pro? Anybody have experience with COMSOL on the newer Mac Pro systems? Thank you.
1 Reply Last Post Oct 21, 2016, 12:02 p.m. EDT
COMSOL Moderator

Hello Michael Pinneo

Your Discussion has gone 30 days without a reply. If you still need help with COMSOL and have an on-subscription license, please visit our Support Center for help.

If you do not hold an on-subscription license, you may find an answer in another Discussion or in the Knowledge Base.

Pascal Zehnter
Send Private Message Flag post as spam

Please login with a confirmed email address before reporting spam

Posted: 8 years ago Oct 21, 2016, 12:02 p.m. EDT
Same "problems" with Comsol or other scientific softwares. I think it's related to the way the OS performs the multicore calculation distribution...and also the way Comsol manages memory
My experience in scientific software (commercial one and not with GPU calculation) is that in fact you dont' need very powerfull machine, the increase of performance isn't significant related to the price of the machine.
So for me there is nothing to do to increase the gap betwenn"old machine" and new one
Same "problems" with Comsol or other scientific softwares. I think it's related to the way the OS performs the multicore calculation distribution...and also the way Comsol manages memory My experience in scientific software (commercial one and not with GPU calculation) is that in fact you dont' need very powerfull machine, the increase of performance isn't significant related to the price of the machine. So for me there is nothing to do to increase the gap betwenn"old machine" and new one

Note that while COMSOL employees may participate in the discussion forum, COMSOL® software users who are on-subscription should submit their questions via the Support Center for a more comprehensive response from the Technical Support team.

Suggested Content