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Operating System and Hardware Compatibility

Operating System and Hardware Compatibility

Owned by Kester Scandrett
Last updated: 27 Mar, 2025

It should be noted that EFDC+ Explorer is designed for Microsoft Windows based operating systems (OS). However, EFDC and EFDC+ can be run on either Windows or Linux OS. This page describes the various operating systems we have tested and regularly use to run the EFDC+/EFDC+ Explorer Modeling System. Recommendations on the hardware specifications are also provided.

EFDC+ Explorer

  • The application is 32 bit. It is compatible on XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and 8.1, Windows10, and Windows Server (2012) for either 32 or 64 bit.

  • EFDC+ Explorer can run on Apple Mac computers running the Windows OS

  • EFDC+ Explorer (v.8 and up) can be run on Virtual Machines running the Windows OS

  • Modern Intel i5 and i7's as well as Xeon systems all work with EFDC+ Explorer. The faster the CPU, the better the speed. 
     

Note

Versions of EFDC+ Explorer using a legacy licensing system (prior to EE8 release) are not compatible with Virtual Machines & issues associated with attempting to use the legacy systems on a VM may not be supported.


EFDC+

  • The application is 32 bit. It is compatible on XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows Server (2012) for either 32 or 64 bit. It may also be compiled to run on Linux OS and DSI regularly use CentOS and Redhat to run EFDC+ models to support real-time systems.

  • EFDC+ is recommended to be run on an Intel system in order to take full advantage of the efficiency gains for the OMP (multi-threading) capabilities. For versions of EFDC prior to EE8, the single threaded version of EFDC_DSI works on an AMD system, but EFDC_DSI_OMP should be run on an Intel system for efficiency gains.

  • EFDC+ has been run with various cloud-computing services such as Amazon AWS. 

  • Users of EFDC+ should run the software on a CPU with as many cores as possible. DSI uses systems with 24 threads (12 cores) using multiple Xeon chips. The more threads/cores the greater the efficiency in model run times.

  • Memory is not particularly critical as the memory for the EFDC+ and EFDC_DSI model is dynamically allocated and most models take < 250 MB of RAM. Four or eight gigabytes should be plenty of memory for most modeling systems.