Hardware Recommendations for Mac Laptop to Run BioDynamo Simulations

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MOHAMMADREZA HEIDARI

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9:35 AM (11 hours ago) 9:35 AM
to biodyna...@googlegroups.com, roman...@ncl.ac.uk

Dear BioDynamo Support Team,

I hope this email finds you well. My name is Mohammadreza Heidari, and I am a PhD student in Biomechanics at UNIVERSITY OF PAVIA. As part of my doctoral research, I will be using BioDynaMo for agent-based simulations, focusing on biological models that involve large-scale computations, such as simulating agents over extended time periods, potentially with GPU-accelerated tasks. Since BioDynaMo does not support Windows, my supervisor has agreed to purchase a Mac laptop for this purpose. We want to ensure it can handle relatively heavy processing loads efficiently without unnecessary downtime or performance bottlenecks. Could you please recommend suitable Mac laptop models that would perform well for these demanding simulations? We're aiming for a balance between cost and capability, something reliable and powerful enough, but not the absolute top-end option.

Thank you in advance for your guidance. Your recommendations will help us make an informed decision.

 

Best regards,

Mohammadreza Heidari

PhD Student

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL, COMPUTER AND BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING

UNIVERSITY OF PAVIA

Ioannis Papadopoulos

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9:46 AM (10 hours ago) 9:46 AM
to MOHAMMADREZA HEIDARI, biodyna...@googlegroups.com, roman...@ncl.ac.uk
Dear Mr. Heidari,

Even though biodynamo is supported on mac os it doesn't support the latest mac os version (although this will be fixed soon) nor gpu acceleration (at least on modern apple m cpus) . I would personally recommend using ubuntu for your purpose. Ubuntu is an operating system that can work with your existing hardware either by installing it alongside/instead of windows or in a virtual machine (although the second option maybe not suitable for your case due to the high processing requirements).

Best regards,
John Papadopoulos



From: biodyna...@googlegroups.com <biodyna...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of MOHAMMADREZA HEIDARI <mohammadrez...@universitadipavia.it>
Sent: Monday, March 9, 2026 11:19:46 AM
To: biodyna...@googlegroups.com <biodyna...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: roman...@ncl.ac.uk <roman...@ncl.ac.uk>
Subject: [BioDynaMo-Forum] Hardware Recommendations for Mac Laptop to Run BioDynamo Simulations
 
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Umar Faruk

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10:34 AM (10 hours ago) 10:34 AM
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Dear Mohammadreza,

I am part of the development team for BioDynaMo and I’ve been using a M2 MacBook for my simulations over the past few years.

I am able to run hundreds of thousands of agents within a reasonable timeframe. I recommend any M series (M3, 4, 5) MacBook Pros with at least 16gb of RAM. I find the CPU simulations run faster on MacBooks than equivalently priced windows machines on the lower end. 

Best regards,
Umar


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MOHAMMADREZA HEIDARI

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10:51 AM (9 hours ago) 10:51 AM
to Umar Faruk, biodyna...@googlegroups.com, roman...@ncl.ac.uk
Hello Umar,
Thank you for the information.🤝

regards, 
Mohammadreza
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