[chimerax-users] ChimeraX hardware recommendations

[Tom Goddard]

Hi Shaun,

  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.

  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.

	Tom

> On Oct 21, 2020, at 10:40 AM, Shaun Rawson <rawson at hkl.hms.harvard.edu> wrote:
> 
> 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?
> 
> Shaun
> 
> On Wed, Oct 21, 2020 at 1:31 PM Tom Goddard <goddard at sonic.net <mailto:goddard at sonic.net>> wrote:
> Oops, sorry for misspelling your name.
> 
> 	Tom
> 
> 
>> On Oct 21, 2020, at 10:30 AM, Tom Goddard <goddard at sonic.net <mailto:goddard at sonic.net>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Shawn,
>> 
>>   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.
>> 
>>   Sorry our ChimeraX web site is unexpectedly down this morning due to some server upgrade issue.  Should be back online later today.
>> 
>> 	Tom
>> 
>> 
>>> On Oct 21, 2020, at 7:50 AM, Shaun Rawson <rawson at hkl.hms.harvard.edu <mailto:rawson at hkl.hms.harvard.edu>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi Tom,
>>> 
>>> 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.
>>> 
>>> 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.
>>> 
>>> Apologies if this is available online - currently https://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimerax/ <https://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimerax/> gives a 403 error for me.
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> 
>>> Shaun
>> 
> 

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