FumeFX Explosion tool is a setup I build upon my water splash tool with some tweaks.
So it works as simple as just selecting the explosion places (Dummies) and you have a couple of pre defined explosion shapes (mesh model). 
The result would be so controllable and predictable explosion, in other words you can model your own explosions.

The simulation data for this group of explosions is about 100GB, the simulation time is considered to be fast a maximum 2 hours for the last shot. but rendering time took for ever using scanline with four directional lights (Key,Rim and two filling lights), the compose was done in Nuke.

This kind of simulations is RAM hungry so 16GB is a start point, so if you are thinking of production quality you should start investing in more ram. And dont forget to have an ssd HD which will make your life much easier, we are talking here about 2GB of data per frame so for example if you are doing a preview it should be 4 times faster using ssd compared to normal HD.