<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Hi Shaun,<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> Apple will keep OpenGL graphics working well into the future. They switched to using their proprietary Metal graphics to run the macOS window system about 4 years ago, and deprecated OpenGL use, but that just means they aren't going to improve their OpenGL. Mac OpenGL drivers tend to crash when lots of graphics memory is used. We are considering using Vulkan instead of OpenGL maybe in a few years. Vulkan is an open standard and has been layered on top of Metal (called MoltenVK) and has native drivers on Windows and Linux.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> Also I have been testing Chimera and ChimeraX on the next macOS, called Big Sur, likely coming out in the next month. Both are working on Big Sur beta 10 released a week ago, although you need ChimeraX 1.1.1. We had to fix ChimeraX 1.1 on Big Sur because Apple changed how software finds the OpenGL library.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Tom</div><div class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Oct 21, 2020, at 10:40 AM, Shaun Rawson <<a href="mailto:rawson@hkl.hms.harvard.edu" class="">rawson@hkl.hms.harvard.edu</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="">No worries, thanks for the response. As an aside to the initial question, are you expecting any issues with OpenGL for ChimeraX on Macs now that they are depreciating and pushing metal instead?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Shaun<br class=""></div></div><br class=""><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Oct 21, 2020 at 1:31 PM Tom Goddard <<a href="mailto:goddard@sonic.net" class="">goddard@sonic.net</a>> wrote:<br class=""></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div style="overflow-wrap: break-word;" class="">Oops, sorry for misspelling your name.<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span style="white-space:pre-wrap" class=""> </span>Tom</div><div class=""><br class=""><div class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Oct 21, 2020, at 10:30 AM, Tom Goddard <<a href="mailto:goddard@sonic.net" target="_blank" class="">goddard@sonic.net</a>> wrote:</div><br class=""><div class=""><div style="overflow-wrap: break-word;" class="">Hi Shawn,<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> You are right that a MacBook with i5 CPU and 16 GB memory and Intel graphics will work fine for ChimeraX including making movies. For large molecules, for example ribosome structures with several hundred thousands atoms, or large cryoEM maps, for example 512 x 512 x 512 and up you could benefit from faster AMD or Nvidia laptop graphics (MacBook Pro), and 32 GB of memory. Another thing to consider is to keep data and ChimeraX on an SSD drive, not a spinning drive. Today's SSD drives are 30 times faster reading data than spinning drives. All Mac laptops only come with SSD drives I believe, but it is good to have enough SSD drive space that your data (like lots of cryoEM maps) does not have to reside on an external drive. Usually 512 GB SSD will do, but again if you work with lots of large data 1 TB SSD could be helpful.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> Sorry our ChimeraX web site is unexpectedly down this morning due to some server upgrade issue. Should be back online later today.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span style="white-space:pre-wrap" class=""> </span>Tom</div><div class=""><br class=""><div class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Oct 21, 2020, at 7:50 AM, Shaun Rawson <<a href="mailto:rawson@hkl.hms.harvard.edu" target="_blank" class="">rawson@hkl.hms.harvard.edu</a>> wrote:</div><br class=""><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="">Hi Tom,</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Just a quick question on any hardware recommendations for running ChimeraX (primarily macbook based). We have a user who is particularly interested in generating animations in ChimeraX so I was wondering if you have any specific min/recommended specs for various functionality.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">It seems to me like the standard macbook config (i5, 16GB RAM, intel graphics) should be fine for day to day operations but maybe they would need to swap to a more powerful linux workstation for the heavy lifting.<br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Apologies if this is available online - currently <a href="https://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimerax/" target="_blank" class="">https://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimerax/</a> gives a 403 error for me.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Thanks,</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Shaun<br class=""></div></div>
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