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What Computer Should I Buy to Run ZEMAX?
- By Mark Nicholson
- Published 13 December 2007
- Frequently Asked Questions
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Rating:
Choice of Processor
ZEMAX is a big, number-crunching application, and so the processor should be as fast as possible, with as much cache RAM (i.e., memory that is built into the processor itself) as possible. But, there is an extra factor to consider.
ZEMAX was written from the ground up as a "multi-threaded" application. That means that every window inside ZEMAX runs as its own thread, or calculation. If you have for example, an MTF plot and a Geometric Image Analysis (GIA) window open, and click Update All, each calculation is performed at the same time, independent of each other.
This means that ZEMAX is very good at using multiple processors. If you have a machine with 2 CPUs, ZEMAX can automatically send the MTF calculation to one processor and the GIA to the other. This makes the best use of your computer's hardware.
Even better, many calculations are themselves multi-threaded. For example, lets say you are tracing 2 million non-sequential rays in a stray light analysis. ZEMAX can automatically trace one ray on one processor, one on another, etc. At the time of writing (April 2006) ZEMAX supports up to 16 processors per machine. Whilst there is a small overhead for managing the threads, performance scales almost directly with the number of processors used.
Multiple CPU machines are now quite affordable, and both Intel and AMD are putting considerable effort into multi-core processors which have multiple CPUs on one chip. This is a great advantage to the ZEMAX user, as ZEMAX has the architecture to exploit this technology.
The article Running ZEMAX on a Multi-CPU Computer gives more details. Even entry-level computers now offer dual core operation, so this is ideal for the ZEMAX user.
ZEMAX is currently a 32-bit application, but 64 bit processors are now available, and a 64-bit version of ZEMAX is under development. A 64-bit version of Windows XP and Windows Vista is also available, although driver support for it is not extensive. The existing 32-bit ZEMAX code runs fine under 64-bit versions of Windows.
The major advantage of 64-bit operating systems and codes is that much more memory is avilable to the code (more on this on the next page).
As a result of these two factors, our recommendations for CPU choice are:
ZEMAX was written from the ground up as a "multi-threaded" application. That means that every window inside ZEMAX runs as its own thread, or calculation. If you have for example, an MTF plot and a Geometric Image Analysis (GIA) window open, and click Update All, each calculation is performed at the same time, independent of each other.
This means that ZEMAX is very good at using multiple processors. If you have a machine with 2 CPUs, ZEMAX can automatically send the MTF calculation to one processor and the GIA to the other. This makes the best use of your computer's hardware.
Even better, many calculations are themselves multi-threaded. For example, lets say you are tracing 2 million non-sequential rays in a stray light analysis. ZEMAX can automatically trace one ray on one processor, one on another, etc. At the time of writing (April 2006) ZEMAX supports up to 16 processors per machine. Whilst there is a small overhead for managing the threads, performance scales almost directly with the number of processors used.
Multiple CPU machines are now quite affordable, and both Intel and AMD are putting considerable effort into multi-core processors which have multiple CPUs on one chip. This is a great advantage to the ZEMAX user, as ZEMAX has the architecture to exploit this technology.
The article Running ZEMAX on a Multi-CPU Computer gives more details. Even entry-level computers now offer dual core operation, so this is ideal for the ZEMAX user.
ZEMAX is currently a 32-bit application, but 64 bit processors are now available, and a 64-bit version of ZEMAX is under development. A 64-bit version of Windows XP and Windows Vista is also available, although driver support for it is not extensive. The existing 32-bit ZEMAX code runs fine under 64-bit versions of Windows.
The major advantage of 64-bit operating systems and codes is that much more memory is avilable to the code (more on this on the next page).
As a result of these two factors, our recommendations for CPU choice are:
- Buy a multiple CPU machine if possible
- Buy 64-bit processors, even if you use a 32-bit version of the operating system for the near future
The 64-bit version of ZEMAX will require a black USB key to operate.