Sim speed - iMac Pro vs Mac Pro

[sherridge101]

Hi all

Here's a default cold smoke setup on a 1cm sphere.

iMac Pro sim is pretty quick.
Mac Pro sim is very slow.

Same default scenes.

Scenes on desktop not server.

iMac Pro - 10 core, 128GB RAM
Mac Pro - 28 core, 192GB RAM

Can I send the movies to a DM please as they're too big and .mp4 which won't upload.

Cheers

Steve

[georgi.zhekov]

Hello,

You can send file over through https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us - there is a submit a request button at the top right.

Can you also set the log verbosity to debug, run the sims again for a few frames and send over the log files if possible. This would provide us with more info on what is happening. You can do that from the the Global Preferences window from the top Maya PhoenixFD menu.
https://docs.chaos.com/display/PHX4M...nixPreferences

Usually the log is located in /Users/$USERNAME/


Thanks a lot!

[sherridge101]

Hi Georgi

Thanks for the info.
I've posted the vids and the log fro the macPro.
Will get the iMac Pro log sorted too and send over.

Cheers

[georgi.zhekov]

Thanks a lot for the logs, we have a suspicion that it might be that the more threads are causing the issue.

Can you try to go to the Simulation rollout of the simulator > Threading > and change the thread limit to something like 10 or 20 for example. Does this speed up the process on the slower machine?

[sherridge101]

Ah, the threads appear to have an effect on the speed:


On 10 Threads

Faster and more like the PC and imacPro

2x Maya crashes so far



On 20 Threads

Faster also

Maya crashed on frame 36 with message

'Copy the existing caches of 'PhoenixSimulator1' to the new location?'

[sherridge101]

56 Threads
Back to slow sim

28 Threads
Crashed at frame 37.5

[georgi.zhekov]

Oh, nice!

If there is a dump file - can you send it over?

The crash dump files are stored either in the /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports (system-wide) or ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticsReports (user-wide) directories, depending on the type of the process that has led to the crash.

Another crash dump file named core.<pid> (where <pid> stands for the PID of the crashed process) must be created in the /cores directory. In order to create this second crash dump file, activate the full core dumps via the ulimit -c unlimited command which makes the core dump files size unlimited. Also make sure to have write permissions for the /cores directory.

In case the /cores directory is hidden in Finder, you can show the hidden files via the defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE command.

Thanks a lot for the help!

[sherridge101]

Thanks for the info.

Does the crash dump file have the .hang file extension?

I may need a bit more info on how to get the core. file.
A dummies guid really

Funnily enough, I haven't had more crashes on simming since our last email

Just a query on speed, will the 'use GPU to aid simulation' help the speed on the Mac?
The Mac Pros have AMD Radeon PRO W6800X 32 GB

Cheers again

[sherridge101]

Sweet spot seems to be 10 Threads.
Weird how 12 Threads is double the time and then 20 Threads is a bit quicker.

5 Threads 1min

10 Threads 33sec

12 Threads 1min 1

20 Threads 45sec

[sherridge101]

10 Threads

Deselecting ‘Use GPU ro Aid Simulation’ seems to be roughly the same - 32.8 sec

[sherridge101]

Interestingly if we drag out a Simulator from scratch (not a preset), and add a Source and then ball, the speeds seems to be ok with Threads on 0.
Correction - putting the Threads on 10 speeds the sim up even more.

Could there be an issue with some of the presets?

[georgi.zhekov]

If you use the same settings as the preset when building a sim from scratch and there is a difference - this means there is an issue indeed.

If you compare the speed between a default simulator and a default Source to one of the presets - there will a significant difference due to the many settings affecting the sim.

As for the dump files - you can press Command + Shift + . to show hidden items on Mac

[sherridge101]

Cool, cheers for the info.
Just had a crash but nothing appeared in the cores folder.

On the default sim and source file:
I turn off the Temperature and put the adaptive grid on Smoke but the grid doesn't become adaptive.

The adaptive grid works ok with temperature on and set to Temperature/liquid?

[georgi.zhekov]

When you use the Smoke for the adaptivity - you will need to adjust the threshold to be something like 0.01 for example, the Threshold for the Temperature that is used by default is 1000 and is too high for the smoke.

[sherridge101]

Super, cheers for the info.