Learning Forum

[danny3126]

Hello,

I'm not sure if this question is entirely related, but I'm planning to purchase a computer for running simulations like Lumerical and COMSOL. Based on my research, it seems that RAM is more important than the graphics card for these applications. I'm considering a computer with 128 GB of RAM and an 8-core CPU. Would this be sufficient to handle most simulations? 

Let me know if there is a better suggestions!

 

Thank you.

[Kirill]

Hello,

I can’t speak for COMSOL.

For Lumerical, some general recommendations can be found in the article Hardware specifications guidelines – Ansys Optics. While having more RAM is beneficial, FDTD simulations are typically limited by memory bandwidth because they involve constant, large-scale data movement between the CPU and RAM. Therefore, in addition to RAM size and the number of cores, prioritize multi-channel memory architectures with faster RAM.

Additionally, Lumerical now supports GPU acceleration. For more details, please see Getting started with running FDTD on GPU – Ansys Optics.

Best regards,
Kirill