System Recommendations for Windows and Linux
Hardware
Based on internal benchmarks and information available to the Electronic Design Automation industry, Sonnet Software recommends the following configurations for optimum performance of your Sonnet em® simulations:
| Component | Desktop System | High Performance System |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel® Core™ i7 i7-990x (total of 6 cores) i7-2600K (total of 4 cores) |
Dual Intel® Xeon® Xeon 5680 or 5690 Processors (Total of 12 cores) |
| RAM | 6GB DDR3 1333 MHz |
24GB DDR3 1333 MHz |
| Hard Disk | SATAII Disk 7200+ RPMs |
SATAII Disk 7200+ RPMs |
| Graphics Card | Open GL® Compatible |
Open GL® Compatible |
| Networking | Gigabit Ethernet |
Gigabit Ethernet |
| Sonnet License | Desktop Solver |
High Performance Solver |
Operating Systems
| Windows: | 7, XP or Vista Professional, 64-Bit editions |
| Linux: | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (Desktop, Workstation, or Server) 64-Bit edition or SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP3 (Desktop or Server) 64-Bit edition |
Notes
Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology (Intel® HT Technology) has been reintroduced on the new Nehalem CPU architecture. Both the Intel® Core™ i7 and Xeon® 5500 series of processors are of the Nehalem architecture. Operating systems interpret Intel® HT Technology as double the number of processing cores (or threads), that are physically present. Because of this and benchmarks comparing systems with Intel® HT Technology enabled and disabled, Sonnet recommends disabling the use of Intel® HT Technology in the computer BIOS settings.
There is a known issue with ATI display adaptors that may cause metal traces in the 3D view to be displayed black. If you are having this problem, we recommend downloading a new driver, located here.
Intel, Intel Core and Xeon are all registered trademarks of the Intel Corporation. OpenGl is a registered trademark of SGI. em is a registered trademark of Sonnet Software, Inc. Sonnet Software, Inc. is not a reseller or partner of the Intel Corporation. These recommendations are provided as a service to customers of Sonnet Software, Inc. Sonnet Software has not been tested on all available hardware configurations and cannot guarantee performance results.
Updated October 2011