[GRASS-user] Mac Requirements for GRASS

[Barton Michael]

I'll second William's comments.

Any new Mac will do a good job of running GRASS. Even on older models, 3D and processor intensive tasks go pretty quickly.

Some multi-threading is in the works for GRASS 7, but it remains limited.

Other than that, you can benefit from any of the other performance enhancements you mention. The tradeoff is simply cost vs. speed of processing and/or size of data files that can be handled. Graphics, even OpenGL graphics for NVIZ, don't seem to put a lot of load on the Mac display system. Normally you get the biggest boost from faster drives and more RAM, especially when processing large files. I don't yet know the effect of the i-series turbo mode. From what I've read it is NOT yet worthwhile to get a solid state drive. The Mac OS doesn't yet support automatic SSD optimization meaning that performance will degrade over time unless you regularly use the equivalent of a defragmentation utility for SSDs. Down the road, this might make a BIG difference for processing large files, but not yet.

I just got a new iMac that is pretty souped up (similar to the one you spec below) and it runs GRASS VERY fast.

 
Michael
____________________
C. Michael Barton
Director, Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity 
Professor of Anthropology, School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Arizona State University

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On Jun 21, 2010, at 11:15 PM, grass-user-request at lists.osgeo.org wrote:

> 
> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:32:47 -0500
> From: William Kyngesburye <woklist at kyngchaos.com>
> Subject: Re: [GRASS-user] Mac Requirements for GRASS
> To: Andrew Lewin <andrew.lewin at sympatico.ca>
> Cc: GRASS user list <grass-user at lists.osgeo.org>
> Message-ID: <7F9DC034-BEC7-4703-B5B0-2377112DF075 at kyngchaos.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> Your MacBook is quite powerful for GRASS.  Some notes (anyone correct me, this is just my general [mis]understanding of things):
> 
> - multiple processors/cores - don't help.  GRASS is not (yet) multithreaded, though there is some interest, I'm not sure if any work on that has started.  The only multiprocessing you will get out of GRASS is if you run multiple sessions, on different mapsets.
> 
> But the turbo feature of the i5/i7 processors should help.
> 
> - drive speed - GRASS is very temp-file intensive, so faster disk speed helps.  The disk interface speed is the same between laptop and full-size hard drives (SATA 300), so it's more a question of seek speed, which generally corresponds to spin speed (RPM).  Both laptop and full-size drives are available up to 7200 RPM, but you can get faster full-size drives (but they are not user servicable in the iMacs and Apple doesn't have that option).
> 
> - drive size - again, for temp-file use. The bigger the better.  Up to 500GB available for the MacBook
> 
> - memory size and speed - again, with the heavy use of temp files, faster and/or more memory may not help much.  Though there are some things that can chew up a lot of memory.  Memory is cheap.  The memory speed between the current line of MacBooks, MacBook Pros, iMacs and Mac Pros are all the same, 1066MHz, so no real speed gain there.  Memory maximum in the MacBooks and Pros is 8GB, vs 16GB in the iMacs and Mac Pros.
> 
> - graphics - for GRASS display, not processing.  NVIZ could be affected.  MacBook has shared-memory graphics, MacBook Pro, iMac and Mac Pro all have dedicated graphics memory.  Someday the graphics-processing-thing, OpenCL, may be used by GRASS.  All current Macs should support it, though the shared memory of the MacBook models may hurt the performance of that.
> 
> 
> Overall, I think the main boost you would get right now out of the iMac over the MacBook is the turbo feature.  Drive and memory expansion are cheap.
> 
> 
> On Jun 21, 2010, at 2:44 PM, Andrew Lewin wrote:
> 
>> Hi Listers,
>> 
>> I would like to purchase a new Mac.  I am debating which type will get me the best bang for the buck.  I would like to know which Mac would be good to use for GRASS as I will be processing images, large databases, and crunching numbers.  I currently have a Macbook with a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB of Memory.  I find that bathymetry layers for large areas, such as the Gulf of Mexico take a long time to process if I do any analysis.  I am looking at buying the iMac 27-inch with the 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 and 4GB of memory. This machine is quite expensive.  Is there another option? Is it too powerful where I can buy another machine that will do the trick?
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> Andrew
> 
> -----
> William Kyngesburye <kyngchaos*at*kyngchaos*dot*com>
> http://www.kyngchaos.com/
> 
> "I ache, therefore I am.  Or in my case - I am, therefore I ache."
> 
> - Marvin
>