Re: Advice for offline image analysis computer

Posted by Gabriel Lapointe on
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/Advice-for-offline-image-analysis-computer-tp1109084p1110499.html

Personnally, I would go for a 64bit OS (Linux, OSX, XP64) but I would avoid Vista at all cost. The system requirement for Vista is too high for an efficient image analysis station. Remember that the 2 gig of ram required for Vista to run semi-smoothly will not be available for image processing. A high end Mac could also be a good machine, with bootcamp for the windows only software, but (unless things changed in recent years) they are not upgradable so forget about adding a new hard-drive or adding more memory afterward.

ImageJ, Mathlab, Huygens and BioimageXD all run natively on Linux. (which has minimal system requirement less than 128 meg of ram), thus leaving plenty of room to work with those big stack. 64 bit Linux is also more stable than XP64 and it is easier to find drivers. Methamorph, Imaris and Volocity, could then be used either with a virtual machine or dual boot when required.

I would say that the importance of RAM > CPU > GPU = HD.

More and more high end software can make use of those extra CPU core so don't be shy to buy a quad core (or more) if you can but I would take those with the biggest L1 cache, it will become a bottleneck faster than the clock for big data set.

RAM should be numerous and fast (800MHz) and get a high bus speed.

Gabriel



Jon Ekman wrote:

I would recommend the Vista 64bit, 8 core with an Open GL “workstation grade” video card and 16GB of RAM. Eventually the software you use will grow into multi-core processing. Ignore the GPU options they are mainly for 3D graphics and games.

 

As for Video, Nvidia Quadro cards and ATI Fire GL cards are the way to go with 256MB-512MB of RAM for a new science imaging analysis workstation. We build all our own workstations here with Quadros (FX 1500 and FX 3450s mainly) and use RAID striped drives 2-4 disks (500GB to 1TB each disk) we place 4GB RAM (XP) -16GB RAM (Vista). We also use Intel boards for our single processor systems(2-4core) and Supermicro boards for our dual processor machines (4-8cores). We stopped using AMD CPUs about 3 years ago in favor of Intel. We also use 600W to 800W power supplies to feed these systems.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Cheers,

 

Jonathan M. Ekman

Imaging Technology Group

Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

405 N. Mathews Avenue

Urbana, IL 61801 USA

Tel: [phone]

Fax: [phone]

 

 

From: Confocal Microscopy List [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Christophe Leterrier
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2008 3:33 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Advice for offline image analysis computer

 

Dear listers,

I have to buy a new computer for our team that will be used as for offline image analysis. The software required (ImageJ, Metamorph, Matlab) require to build a Windows/Vista machine. The cost would be around $5,000 / 5000€. The job would be processing (a lot) and rendering. My questions are :
- Should I go for a "traditionnal" computer, I mean a 32-bits, dual core, XP computer with maxed RAM (I guess it is 3GB or so) ? Is it usefull to go to more fancy stuff like 64 bits, 4 or 8 core, 8 to 16GB RAM machine ? Would ImageJ/Metamorph/Matlab really benefit from it (I would love to have an answer from the Metamorph/Matlab people) ?
- What about graphic cards and GPU ? What is the best choice ? I've heard about new strategies to speed up processing by making the GPU churn data as well as graphics, but I don't think it is really commercially available now or implemented in commercial software yet.

Thanks for your advices !

Christophe