GIS and multi-core computers
Oct 4th, 2006 | By Jesse | Category: Gadgets, General, archiveI saw the posts by Rob and James a couple of weeks ago about multicore and 64 bit but was too sick to kick in at the time. Now that the coughing has stopped, I want in. Before I left my day job to go back to try to finish that school thing, I had the joy of using a dual 3.6 Ghz processor Dell and it was a joy. While most software still is not written as multithreaded, the ability to have a processor or a core that is dedicated to ArcGIS, or any other processor hog, while leaving a processor for the OS and other low overhead software led to much less crashing and huge speed improvements. While you can set the processor affinity for any process in the Process Manager most of the time it isn’t necessary as Windows will balance processes between cores/CPUs. While this isn’t an issue if you are using ArcMap for cartography, it is great for analyses where your raster calculation, or other, gets its very own core.
Just as an example, we (ok mostly Sue) are working on a project in ArcScene that contains a high-res elevation model and a large style gallery of 3D symbols and we consistently crashed ArcScene on our single processor machines, but we bought a fairly cheap dual-core AMD and it works like a charm. ArcScene’s graphics engine still seems to have the issue that it doesn’t push enough off to the GPU leaving the CPU to pick up the slack.
The upshot is that I definitely suggest spending your money on a dualcore machine over a single processor machine if you do any kind of heavy computing, even if the dualcore is rated at a lower clock speed the process balancing between the cores will usually help you shave time off of processes. As for me, as soon as Apple releases a Core 2 Duo laptop I will be standing in line.
Dual-core is the new era of computers. There is no doubt. I have read several articles about dual-core computers. According to Intel, their vision by 2010, is to implement a 32 core processor. Intel is also suppose to be releasing a quad (4) core processor in November. I imagine that by the time Microsoft Vista is released in January, Intel will have a quad core ready for the desktop. I agree with you that you should definitely buy a multi-core processor over a single core i.e. Pentium 4. I would; however, hold off buying a new multi-core processor until Vista is released. You might get a quad-core over a dual core for the same price. I will end my comments now, because I believe I am getting off track of the subject. Thanks for you view of dual-core processing.
admin/CTKconnect
This is where I DO begin to falter. Since most GIS software (not all mind you) is still not multithreaded, there is a question of whether the “more cores are better” attitude will stand up for GIS workstations. It is great in a server environment (eg Opterons and the announced Intels) but unless you begin to run multiple high overhead sessions on the workstation the lack of multithreading is going to leave you with relatively idle processors.