Even though any machine can run the GNAT toolset and GNAT Studio IDE, in order to get the best experience, we recommend using a machine with as many cores as possible since all individual compilations can run in parallel. A comfortable setup for a compiler server is a machine with 24 physical cores or more, with at least 48 GB of memory (2 GB per core).
For a desktop machine, a minimum of 4 cores is recommended (8 preferred), with at least 2GB per core (so 8 to 16GB).
In addition, for running and navigating sources in GNAT Studio smoothly, we recommend at least 1.5 GB plus 3 GB of RAM per 1 million source line of code. In other words, we recommend at least 3 GB for for 500K lines of code and 7.5 GB for 2 million lines of code.
Note that using local and fast drives will also make a difference in terms of
build and link time. Network drives such as NFS, SMB, or worse, configuration
management filesystems (such as ClearCase dynamic views) should be avoided as
much as possible and will produce very degraded performance (typically 2 to 3
times slower than on local fast drives). If such slow drives cannot be avoided
for accessing the source code, then you should at least configure your project
file so that the result of the compilation is stored on a drive local to the
machine performing the run. This can be achieved by setting the Object_Dir
project file attribute.