I think I want this post to be about computers and CAD, but then I thought maybe slightly more general computing. We will see.
First, I will list the main components of a computer and their functions as we know it today from a non-electrical engineering perspective (02/2024):
CPU (Central Processing Unit): The commander of the computer. It is versatile at completing tasks. Processors are made of tiny nano-meter sized transistors. They form logic gates by switching. Each clock of the processor is a cycle of calculations performed by the switching of transistors. Modern processors does billions of cycles per second, thus operating at some GHz. Each cycle a processor can perform a certain number of instructions. IPC or instructions per clock is a measure of how many instructions the processor can execute per cycle. Each year, both IPC and processor clock rate increases as a result of being able to pack more transistors in the same volume. Modern processors are multi-core and multi-threaded. A core is a sub-unit of a processor that can accept instructions. The cores often share a cache, a small amount of super fast volatile memory that retain some instructions to share between the cores. If a software task supports splitting instructions to multiple cores, the task can be completed faster. Each core sometimes support multiple threads, a type of processor core capability that occupies a core most of the time. A core can wait for instructions from cache or memory for one task, while executing instructions for another task. Currently a processor core can have two threads or logical cores. Processors generate quite a bit of heat due to some inefficiencies and big power-hungry multi-core processors on desktop machines can need big heat sinks or liquid cooling loops.
RAM (Random Access Memory): Going down the memory lane here. Out from processor cache is random access memory. This is a bigger data pool where instructions live. It is not as fast as processor cache, but still plenty. It is volatile, meaning when a computer loses power or shuts down, the data stored on RAM will disappear. Double Data Rate 4 and 5 (DDR4 and DDR5) is the current standard. Double Data Rate refers to passing data on the both the rise and fall of the memory clock. The memory clock synchronizes the memory to the processor, and data can be expected at a certain cadence. Usually some type of oscillator generates this clock. Often two memory modules can be accessed at the same time in dual channel, giving another data rate increase.
Hard Drive: Going further down the data chain, we arrive at the hard drive. This is a device to store data and feed the RAM. Usually this is the slowest storage device. However, this is not volatile storage. Your photos on your hard drive don't disappear when the computer powers off. Currently, solid state drives that involve no moving parts have become ubiquitous. It was only a few years ago that they were luxuries. Unlike a spinning hard drive that uses a magnetic head to flip data stored as positive or negative polarity on metallic coated spinning glass disks, solid state drives are not limited by the speed of moving components. They can access data from IC chips at many times the speed of spinning hard drives. The interface of SSD (solid state drive) has been increasing in speed and the integrated circuits inside these disks have also improved. The longevity and write cycle problems have improved as SSDs improved.
GPU (Graphics Processing Unit): Gamers and graphics professions need this. The GPU is mostly responsible for outputting visuals to a screen, projector, etc. Unfortunately we do not have holographic projectors yet, so a lot of work needs to be done to convert something 3D to display on a 2D medium. Also animations and videos need to be processed to be displayed on a screen. Sometimes modern GPUs also have capabilities that traditionally are the job of the CPU like 3D rendering and physics simulation. GPUs are very good at a particular set of tasks rather than the CPU that can switch quickly back and forth and direct the show. GPUs are often more power-hungry than CPUs due to the high raw computing power. In consequence they require beefy power supplies and good cooling solutions.
Motherboard: This is the main board and backbone that holds the above components together. The motherboard has many many layers of interconnections that connects all the components together and make sure they can talk to each other properly. It also distributes power to the CPU and have regulators that smoothes out the current going to the CPU at a set voltage. The motherboard also houses ports to output and get inputs, for example USB to connect keyboard. It has fast busses that connects to the GPU, memory, and solid state drives.
Before I get carried away, let's talk about CAD (computer-aide design) and CAE (computer-aided engineering). Both require good computers, but not exactly cutting edge either to start on. For college, mechanical and aerospace engineering students can easily get by with a laptop under $1000. The laptop should have 16GB of DDR4 memory with a quad-core or higher Intel or AMD processor. Any sort of SSD storage should be fine as long as it's over 256GB and at least SATA3, a connection interface that is slower than current M.2 used for faster SSDs. Currently, integrated graphics or graphics built into the CPU package itself is not half as bad as it once was, and could run programs like Solidworks and CREO without a problem. Obviously, a dedicated GPU would help even more, but it isn't necessary. If I were to choose my college laptop again, I would have gone with something lighter at the sacrifice of power. It really was overkill to get a so-called mobile workstation, which is only starting to have relevance now as I work on big simulations that take hours to run on 20 cores and CAD models that have many complex geometries. Large AutoCAD files of around 50 sheet can also can become sluggish. In engineering school, students rarely get a lot of complicated CAD and CAE cases.
But even for professionals do I think spending the money on professional graphics cards and huge amounts of error correction RAM and big multi-core processors is necessary? It really depends. At a certain point, the effectiveness of your hardware to complete a project will outweigh the money spent. Usually 64GB of error-correcting RAM would be fine along with a midrange processor with 6 to 8 cores. The graphics solution can be entry level Nvidia Quadro 2000 or a mid-range Quadro 4000. Nvidia cards come with CUDA cores, which can come in handy with certain rendering and simulation programs that leverage the parallel processing capabilities of a GPU. AMD's current offerings in the professional graphics world are less convincing. Workstation laptops still make sense to allow for work flexibility. But a workstation desktop could also be a good addition. At this point, decent sized NVME M.2 SSDs of 1TB to 2TB should be considered. Gaming grade graphics cards and non error correcting RAM down to 32GB and quad core processors can be considered workable if budget is not enough. In addition, network speed is important on any collaborative design system like Teamcenter or Solidworks PDM.
The suggestion for money is no object category would be a top of the line workstation laptop accompanied by a workstation desktop and also access to a supercomputer. Usually the high performance computing offered by supercomputers will cut down hours of simulation to minutes. However, most CAE programs can operate in the background on modern multi-core CPUs on laptops, and one can simultaneously do other work on it, it's just the results will take hours sometimes. Really for CAD design and 3D modeling, it probably just needs to stop at the desktop level, because what a user needs is instant feedback. A compute cluster or supercomputer cannot provide that over a network. A top of the line graphics card and 256GB of RAM and 96 cores should be fine for very large 3D models. Of course the fastest NVME M.2 SSDs also help.
For gaming use, currently a 6-core processor with 16-32GB of RAM and a mid-range Nvidia RTX 3080/4070 or AMD RX6800XT/7700XT seems like the sweet spot at 1440p screen resolution. For laptops, RTX4070 mobile seems like the graphics solution to go with. It will change very rapidly in the next year or two. So this is only valid at the writing of this article.
My relationship with computers as the last of the Millennials has covered quite a span if you will. The generation that will last see a floppy disk and VHS being used. But also a generation that saw how rapidly the floppy disk went to a CD and then to a DVD, and then to a Blu Ray, intermingled with the evolution from a PATA hard drive to a SATA hard drive to a SATA SSD and then to an M.2 SSD. And these were just some storage technologies. I am awestruck at the pace that things have evolved.
In my memory our first computer was a white desktop running windows 95 and in around the year 2000. It also had a color CRT screen with a curve to it and every time we turned it on it would say "Energy Star", oh to this day I still wonder what that meant. So I looked it up. Basically the EPA made environmental and electricity efficiency specifications up til today to which computers must meet in order to display such a logo. Actually, that computer was probably good for its time, I just never really learned to use it much. Yep, mom and dad used dial-up and I was really terrified of the dial-up sounds. You would think electrical engineers really wanted all the kids to be afraid of the internet. One of my older friends tried to install early versions of StarCraft on that machine, but as far as I remembered it I never got it to run myself.
Fast forward to the early 2000s, that's when the windows Xp grassland "Bliss" background became ubiquitous. Yes, kids this was way before the iphone. This was when the Compaq and IBM Thinkpad and Dell Latitude laptops were becoming more popular as business computers. The laptop clamshell design, which still carries on today, was fascinating to me. There were really innovations in this era. For those that remember, wifi and cellular cards can be added as PCMCIA cards. In the desktop space the flat CRT was all the craze and AMD had come out on top in the processor arena. And there was I installing games on some of these poor machines. Graphics was horrible, and dedicated graphics cards were really rare. Yes, dial-up was still a thing and we had to yank the phone cable to get internet. And a landline phone was also a necessity those days. We got past the pagers here, and the flip phone was the standard form factor.
Example of Early 2000s Laptop Computer Layout- They had removable DVD drives
PCMCIA Wifi Card
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:D-Link_DWL-AG650_Air_Xpert_CardBus_Wireless_Adaptor_1.jpg
In 2008, I bought a Thinkpad R400 running a Core 2 Duo P8600 2.4GHz duo core. This was at dawn of multi-core processors and was a huge step up from a single core Celeron Compaq struggling to run windows xp. However at the pace that computing power developed this new laptop would also be obsolete in 3 years. It was replaced by a Thinkpad T420s running on a second generation core i5. This is now two generations later with a solid-state drive and dedicated graphics as well as two more threads.
In 2012, I built a desktop computer running a second generation core i5, codenamed Sandy Bridge. This was my introduction into overclocking and discrete graphics cards. It operates to this day and still have most of what it started with. Yes, the heatsinks on both the CPU and GPU are big for more cooling and overclocking capabilities.
My 2012-built Beloved Desktop in It's Current State
I left home for college in 2013. I took with me a big guy: a Dell Precision M4700 Mobile Workstation. Okay it's a laptop, but it was like 1.3" thick and 6.2 lbs. It was a monster. The processor was as powerful at my 2012 desktop. The discrete graphics was at a mid-range level. It was an Nvidia Quadro K2000M. This type of professional graphics card served me well when using Solidworks and Autodesk Inventor. Although I will explain how it was probably unnecessary for the student. Luckily, the graphics card also enabled me to play some games. In the pursuit for more power, in 2015, the laptop underwent surgery and I replaced the graphics card. This was a technology that appeared for a brief moment but it was very memorable. In some bigger laptops, the graphics processor is a separate card just like in desktop systems and used an interfaced called MXM (Mobile PCI EXpress Module). What a time to have been alive. Today, unfortunately, graphics processors are soldered on and embedded on the motherboards of laptops due to the favoritism towards thinner form factors. This didn't mean it was plug and play. A lot of things could go wrong, unlike on a desktop system. The motherboard needed to have a firmware that would be compatible with the next generation MXM graphics card. If Dell decided to drop support for the next generation graphics card in the interest of selling more of the next laptop model, they can. This was a lucky hack.
Laptop Surgery in 2015: The Graphics Card Sits Under It's Own Heatsink （removed here）
Unfortunately, This laptop was disassembled again in 2017. Yes, graphics power was not enough again. This time, there was no option for an XMX graphics upgrade. The CPU and ram and hard drive were taken out and transplanted onto a rare desktop case mountable motherboard. Such a board allowed the mobile processor to be used along with SODIMM mobile memory.
Another Frankenstein Creation by Yours Truly ...
The Remains of My Dell Precision M4700
Now, there was another creation in 2016. A media PC I built for myself and my dorm mates for less than 200 USD. A quad core Intel core 2 quad processor on the then already old LGA775 socket was voltage modded with conductive ink to trick the motherboard to give it more voltage because the cheap motherboard on the pre-built office machine didn't allow such control. A compatible beefy heatsink was sourced from ebay and the processor was brought to a stable 3.9 Ghz. I sourced a midrange AMD Radeon HD7870 graphics card again off ebay and installed 8GB of DDR2 memory. Unfortunately budget did not allow a solid state drive.
Dell office PC Conversion
You might wonder what I daily drive...
Case looks familiar? Yeah the motherboard holding the remains of my Dell Precision M4700 laptop had failed. I kept the case and built an AMD based system in 2022. This time with lots of lighting, as RGB has become the fashion these days. One old part was recycled: the Nvidia 980Ti graphics card I got on craigslist for 150 way before the mining craze hit. It is still a pretty capable card, and I watercooled it when I built the PC. This and the 1080ti after it were mistakes on Nvidia's part, their performance just didn't dip that much compared to the newer mid-range cards. In the mining craze that drove graphics card prices up, people held onto the old flagships. Meanwhile memory tech has evolved to DDR4 with twice the speed of some DDR3 memory of the older generations. The processor arena also saw AMD become equals to Intel on performance and besting Intel on value. This system has an AMD Ryzen 2700X 8 core processor. This exemplifies the move to ever more cores for multi-threaded workloads. It signals that more and more software programs are starting to really be able to use multiple cores effectively.
Laptop wise, I still use a Thinkpad X230 Tablet. It is the last of the Thinkpad computers that has removable and replaceable everything. It is surprisingly versatile and fast enough that I still use it. Finding a battery replacement every two years has become more difficult, so I might have to retire it soon. I've just about taken it apart and assembled it back 3 times. This was two machines off of ebay that I combined into one working piece. The classic keyboard was sourced from ebay and it replace the chiclet keyboard. This was the last generation of Thinkpads that one can have the classic keyboard on, although some hacking was needed. If any of you have typed on a Thinkpad T43 or a T61, you will understand the hype of typing pleasure on Thinkpads. Even the newer (circa 2013 X230) classic keyboard can only get to about 70% of the feel of the even older models when IBM was still involved in making the Thinkpad laptops. The X230 was an example from the era before the touch screen and Microsoft Surface tablets and the ubiquity of ipad tablets. I must say to have an ips touch screen with stylus and a 360 hinge in 2013 was pretty advanced. And it has aged well. I guess also the trackpoint in the center will become a history piece. It is really nice to use for the record. The advantage is you don't have to take your hands off of the keyboard to mouse.
Thinkpad X230 Tablet Circa 2013
For the past couple months, I've actually docked my Steamdeck and used it more often than my desktop computer. The Steamdeck is basically a handheld gaming computer that runs a custom Linux operating system. It is still unrefined in some ways, but it is very usable as a computer and gaming device. I would certainly like to see the second generation bring external graphics card capabilities as well as easier access to storage. There are plans to hack it and install an external graphics card and dual boot windows when I have the time.
Cute Lil' Steamdeck
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