We have been successful in using Bloom Cloud Engine to process several hundred Gb of data quite easily. Processing such datasets fast can be challenging for any software and hardware, however, you can take some steps to get the best performance. Some hints and tips for faster performance are described below. Please use them at your discretion; we are also pleased to discuss them with you.

Disk Performance

Disk performance generally is the most important factor for processing raw scan data on Bloom Cloud Engine. Since Bloom Cloud Engine would perform significant read and write operations on the disk, here is a brief description of each technology.

NVMe SSD

This is the best configuration with a typical disk IO of 1.5-2 Gb/s, and this hardware is now commonly available. The SSD is capable of performing disk IO that typically exceeds 1Gb/s, but in most computer hardware it is connected through a SATA III interface, which limits this speed to ~300Mb/s. 


The keyword M.2 commonly associated with NVMe hardware denotes the physical form of the disk. It does not automatically imply that M.2 is also NVMe. On contrary, it is likely that if the memory or the motherboard does not specifically mention NVMe, it will be using the slower SATA interface.

SATAIII SSD

This is second best option at ~300Mb/s and is most commonly available in current hardware systems.

HDD

If the data is on HDD and not easy to temporarily move to a SSD, please see that it is connected through SATA interface. If the HDD happens to be connected with USB, please connect using blue colored USB3 cable and computer port.

Memory and CPU

Faster memory and CPU is the second most important factor for raw data processing. In most case 32Mb of ram is adequate for processing of data sets containing 1 billion points.

Graphics Card

High performance gaming graphics cards with excess of 4Mb texture are not required because with point clouds there are very few triangle meshes and no texture maps. Nvida Gforce cards typically outperform Nvidia Quadro cards of the same cost.

Windows Software Configuration

If processing raw scan data, the Anti-virus system check and Windows search on the scan data can slow down data processing significantly. Please discuss with your IT department, if they can arrange a system that circumvents this slowdown. In the minimum, the windows search should be disabled for files with extension ".point".

Laptop vs Desktop

A laptop will always cost more than a desktop for a given performance level and the laptop's inherent motherboard design and limits for thermal cooling mean that the performance will not equal that of desktop machine. Many Small Form Factor (SSF) desktop machines are available that make traveling with the desktop much easier.

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