Single-Core vs Multi-Core Performance for PSS/E and PowerFactory: Which is Favored?

asked 2023-10-06 08:46:01 -0500

Ami
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Hello everyone,

I am in the process of upgrading our workstation and am looking into whether a CPU with stronger single-core or multi-core performance would be more beneficial for running PSS/E and PowerFactory efficiently. Our work involves extensive power system simulations and analyses.

I wanted to gather insights from anyone who has experience with these software applications on this particular aspect:

Does PSS/E and/or PowerFactory benefit more from a higher single-core performance or is it optimized to take advantage of multiple cores for parallel processing? Have you noticed any significant performance improvements with either single-core or multi-core optimized CPUs when running complex simulations or analyses on PSS/E or PowerFactory? Are there any specific CPU models you would recommend for optimal performance with these software applications? Any insights or experiences shared would be greatly appreciated as it would help in making an informed decision for the hardware upgrade.

Thank you in advance for your time and assistance.

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answered 2023-10-10 10:38:31 -0500

Dinesh Dhungana
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updated 2023-10-10 10:39:20 -0500

I have some experience with PSS/E on this topic. Based on my experience, PSS/E does not improve performance just by having multiple cores on your machine unless you explicitly have parallel processing scripts which split the job into multiple cores. If you have your scripts configured to run your analysis in parallel, you are way better off by having multiple cores. With multiple cores, most analysis which can be performed in parallel (eg. dynamics contingency analysis), speed up almost proportional to the no of cores used (minus some overhead). With a 56 physical core machine, we were able to increase our dynamics simulation speed by about 50 times compared to regular i7 laptops.

If your process is not parallel ready (eg. cascading analysis when you wait for the results of one analysis to start another phase, etc.), a stronger single core may make sense compared to typical single cores.

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Single-Core vs Multi-Core Performance for PSS/E and PowerFactory: Which is Favored?

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