[CFD 404]

Hi

I am new in CFD..Does exist some sites where I can pay for working on CFD?

If does ,which is,and is it better option(cheaper) to buy my own high-performance desktop/laptop or to use their "online platform"?

[sbaffini]

If I understood correctly what you mean, you may be looking for something like:

https://www.simscale.com/

https://www.rescale.com/

https://www.theubercloud.com/

By definition, you actually use their hardware resources for the heavy lifting, so you just need some device to access their website. Still, it probably makes sense to still use them trough a regular pc.

[CFD 404]

Originally Posted by sbaffini

If I understood correctly what you mean, you may be looking for something like:

https://www.simscale.com/

https://www.rescale.com/

https://www.theubercloud.com/

By definition, you actually use their hardware resources for the heavy lifting, so you just need some device to access their website. Still, it probably makes sense to still use them trough a regular pc.

Do you think they can afford faster speed than PC workstation(up to 3000$)?
I dont see anywhere what is price for rent their CFD?

[sbaffini]

Well, actually, they all rely on third parties like Amazon, Azure and Google cloud. So, none of the services have their own hardware, they just sell you a streamlined experience. So expect the cost to be higher than the ones of the underlying providers.

And you can get as high performance as the underlying provider as well, of course. But you can't certainly compare your workstation with a cluster with an indefinite number of processors. And even for equal number of processors, while it is likely that the CPUs from the cloud are not necessarily top notch, the comparison is nonetheless meaningless.

[CFD 404]

Originally Posted by sbaffini

Well, actually, they all rely on third parties like Amazon, Azure and Google cloud. So, none of the services have their own hardware, they just sell you a streamlined experience. So expect the cost to be higher than the ones of the underlying providers.

And you can get as high performance as the underlying provider as well, of course. But you can't certainly compare your workstation with a cluster with an indefinite number of processors. And even for equal number of processors, while it is likely that the CPUs from the cloud are not necessarily top notch, the comparison is nonetheless meaningless.

What is underlying providers?
so you want to say that workstation is faster than cloud ?

(my english is not so good so I didnt understand well the point..)

[sbaffini]

The underlying providers are Amazon, Azure and Google.

And no, I wanted to say that the comparison is not meaningful because your workstation is very different from any cloud solution

[CFD 404]

Originally Posted by sbaffini

The underlying providers are Amazon, Azure and Google.

And no, I wanted to say that the comparison is not meaningful because your workstation is very different from any cloud solution

What is your advice for my case, to buy high performance(128gb+ ram) workstation or use cloud?
(also I must first learn to use CFD...)
I am doing this as hobby

[sbaffini]

If it is as a hobby, I would stick to a simple pc. You don't need a full blown workstation to do most things.

Consider that a classical rulw of thumb with most cfd codes is that you need around 1Gb ram per million cells. Even 16 gb could be enough for certain things.

Of course, the more the better. But people have done CFD on workstations since more than 20 years, so it is doable with less than you think

[CFD 404]

Originally Posted by sbaffini

If it is as a hobby, I would stick to a simple pc. You don't need a full blown workstation to do most things.

Consider that a classical rulw of thumb with most cfd codes is that you need around 1Gb ram per million cells. Even 16 gb could be enough for certain things.

Of course, the more the better. But people have done CFD on workstations since more than 20 years, so it is doable with less than you think

Thanks for your advice..
But for serious CFD work your advice is workstation better than cloud?

If i choose laptop HP zbook workstation(up to 128gb ram) what proccesor take, xeon or i9? What do you think about this option for me?

[sbaffini]

I have two dell mobile workstations, respectively with:

32 gb - 64 gb of ram
4 cpu (i7) - 8 cpu (xeon)

And I use them for my CFD consultancy job within their respective limits. In practice their suitability for a job depends from the size of the job/mesh and how much time I can/want to spend on it. If a certain problem requires tens of millions of cells and needs to be delivered in a week, I have no choice than going to the cloud.

Cloud and workstations are just 2 different things. I don't suggest one over the other, also because you still need a pc to use the cloud.

So, yes, in a sense buy a workstation, but just don't overkill if you are doing this for fun, otherwise you spend money on something you won't use.

[CFDfan]

Originally Posted by CFD 404

What is your advice for my case, to buy high performance(128gb+ ram) workstation or use cloud?
(also I must first learn to use CFD...)
I am doing this as hobby

The RAM and its bandwidth is the bottleneck so I recommend you to buy 64 or better 128gB DDR4. It will keep you going in the years ahead. If you buy the laptop berry in mind that the latest model CPUs apart from being very expensive also gets throttled because of the high temperature when running the CFD, so you don't get the max performance out of them. If you buy a workstation PC that won't be the case however. A good videocard won't hurt either, but it's not as critical as the RAM and CPU.

[Gert-Jan]

Buy a refurbished HP Workstation (Z840) with enough RAM, 32 Xeon processors, SSD HPZ drives (1Gb/s) and a NVIDIA Quadro graphics card (> M2000). Worked fine for me.

Over the years it much cheaper than renting computers in the cloud, not knowing what you really get, not optimized for CFD, slow graphics, etc.

[Simbelmynë]

If you wish to have better data on which system to pick, then I suggest this thread.