Does Cosmos use multiple core? Does it use it in every aspect (meshing and calculation). I plan to buy the new dell m4400 and don't know what to choose between 2 core at 3 ghz or 4 cores at 2.5 ghz.
I run Solidworks Pro, mostly relatively small (~20k el) nonlinear runs on a dual core machine. I do not see it using both for meshing, but do see both cores maxed out for parts of the solver (nstar). I don't know if Cosmos would even bother with the third and fourth cores... Either confirm with them directly about the quad core or I'd suggest a faster dual core machine. I think the more interesting question is whether to stay 32 bit or go 64 bit for the higher RAM capability.
This is exactly the info I was looking for. Chances are good that Cosmos wouldn't use other cores for meshing but would use then for solving. I don't thing they put a maximum core number on tasks. They just code it so task can be splitted or not.
With a quad-core, Cosmos will run at 68% of all cores, during the solving (not the meshing), using the FFEPlus solver. For the Direct Sparse, it hogs the RAM and runs at 100%.
See brief discussion on scribd. There isn't much concrete information "out there".