Hardware requirements to run Brainstorm effectively

Discussions
1

Hi there,

We are considering getting a local computer for Brainstorm, since its memory and graphics requirements are too much for our Linux clusters. All I can see for hardware requirements is to use a 64-bit processor. Do you have any other recommendations or suggestions? We seem to need from 8-18 GB of RAM for our brains and EEGs, but what about multiple cores and speed?

Oh yes, I meant to ask for the computer specs of the computer you used for the Matlab Brainstorm webinar you gave recently. That setup was pretty zippy!

Finally, does Brainstorm ever avail itself of multiple cores or multiple processors?

-Jeff

2

Hi Jeff,

Brainstorm relies on Matlab’s algorithms for almost everything, computation and display. You can search online for configurations that are well adapted for running intense work on Matlab. Most Matlab functions are multi-threaded and can work efficiently on multiple cores. If you see that Brainstorm is not using all the available cores, you have to check with the configuration of Matlab on your system.

I guess the more standard and stable the system is, the better the Matlab implementation. In general, graphics are going to run faster and smoother on Win7 and Win8 systems, and the memory/load management can be more robust on Linux. Just avoid MacOS.

Above 8Gb of RAM, the only thing you increase is your ability to work with large matrices. All our workstations at the MNI have 64Gb of RAM, this allows the manipulation of full source matrices and dense connectivity matrices.

The computer I was using for the webinar was my Lenovo W520 laptop, bought in 2011, specs by order of importance:

  • SSD hard drives (HD speed is maybe the most important features when working with large files) - it’s difficult to have 2Tb SSD, but you could have a RAID array of mechanical, with a good RAID controller it can speed up significantly the reading of large files.
  • Don’t go cheap with your motherboard, this is the most important part to have a fast computer, much more than an expensive processor
  • 8Gb RAM
  • Intel i7 quad-core
  • NVIDIA Quadro 1000M (very fast 3D graphics on windows systems)
  • Win7 64bit

Cheers,
Francois