Quartus Performance - What Processor, Memory, Disk?

In the bench mark when 4 cpu's were used the time decreased about 25%, so the number of cores is not the total answer. The experience that shows more and faster memory follows logically, because a core cannot process if it is waiting for memory. Many years ago Gene Amdahl said that a multi-processor would increase performance about 40%. That was for a 2-way and it looks like it is true for a 4-way. The next thing to consider is whether the data is in memory or not. The cpu has to wait to get data from memory, and it has to be brought in from disk first. For large files the block size on disk is 4KB or larger so the average data rate is high. But look at the file sizes in Quartus .. probably 1KB average. Each file hast to be read individually so a large disk cache is very important.