Ramdisks

[quackhandle]

This is exactly the opposite of what the OP is looking for.

USB drives are slow as tulip, the majority are slower than HDD, high end models that are actually a mini SSDs are a bit better but can't come closer to a mid-high end SSD.

The function of Windows where it can use USB stick for performance enhancement is actually aimed at low RAM systems to augment the RAM by adding a USB flash drive to act as swap/page file location. It's a gimmick made completely redundant by cheap RAM and SSDs

Was this to assist with the awful performance of Vista?

qh

 

[DimPrawn]

Didn't say SSD is fast enough to replace RAM, just that there is hardly any load that is worth placing on a RAM drive. The kind of load like data analysis is running in the RAM natively without the need for an artificial "disk" drive made of RAM.

Some applications read large files from disk, multiple times. One example is a trading platform that reads 20GB tick files during optimisation.

If you place these files onto a RAM disk the optimisation is completed in minutes instead of days.

32GB RAM costs less than than a train ticket to London these days.

 

[vwdan]

Some applications read large files from disk, multiple times. One example is a trading platform that reads 20GB tick files during optimisation.

If you place these files onto a RAM disk the optimisation is completed in minutes instead of days.

32GB RAM costs less than than a train ticket to London these days.

But, once again, this is a specific use case where the system architects would know and design accordingly.

I love it when CUK starts to talk infrastructure - always ripe for a giggle.

The OP needs and SSD - no more, no less. The VAST majority of other applications (Including enterprise) also need very little more - the correct RAID, the correct SAN config and perhaps some nice caching in front with the use of read/write caches. Very few need the design you're discussing, and as I said up there, to bring it up here seems completely irreverent.

It's also a ******* tulipe requirement, by the way.

 

[NotAllThere]

...- the correct RAID...

I run a VM off striped SSDs. Super fast. (Backed up to a HDD)

 

[DimPrawn]

But, once again, this is a specific use case where the system architects would know and design accordingly.

I love it when CUK starts to talk infrastructure - always ripe for a giggle.

The OP needs and SSD - no more, no less. The VAST majority of other applications (Including enterprise) also need very little more - the correct RAID, the correct SAN config and perhaps some nice caching in front with the use of read/write caches. Very few need the design you're discussing, and as I said up there, to bring it up here seems completely irreverent.

It's also a ******* tulipe requirement, by the way.

The architects of the trading system wrote the software many years ago when 4GB was considered all the RAM you would ever need. It is closed source and they aren't changing it. Consequently it reads the data from disk, streaming, chunks at a time and is VERY slow.

Using a RAM disk you can speed this up 1000x times.

But hey, no one needs a RAM disk ever do they?

 

[AtW]

Using this product - RAMDisk for W2k / XP / Vista / Server 2003 / 2008 / 2012 / Windows 7 / Windows 8 / Windows 10

Works well.

Languages with Garbage Collectors are pretty garbage at long term memory usage, where as using RAM disk allows to cache things and control space usage without any fragmentation of heaps. There are other uses as well.

P.S. Writing programs since the times when 640KB was enough for everybody...

 

[sal]

Some applications read large files from disk, multiple times. One example is a trading platform that reads 20GB tick files during optimisation.

If you place these files onto a RAM disk the optimisation is completed in minutes instead of days.

32GB RAM costs less than than a train ticket to London these days.

Here is a thought - why doesn't the said trading platform keep the files that it just read in the memory pages of the RAM natively? Why would it need to write them in a RAM disk "file system" during optimization? It makes no sense, you are just trying to make tulip up for the sake of argument...

 

[sal]

Using this product - RAMDisk for W2k / XP / Vista / Server 2003 / 2008 / 2012 / Windows 7 / Windows 8 / Windows 10

Works well.

Languages with Garbage Collectors are pretty garbage at long term memory usage, where as using RAM disk allows to cache things and control space usage without any fragmentation of heaps. There are other uses as well.

Jesus F Christ, the '90s are calling asking for their website back...

 

[DimPrawn]

Here is a thought - why doesn't the said trading platform keep the files that it just read in the memory pages of the RAM natively? Why would it need to write them in a RAM disk "file system" during optimization? It makes no sense, you are just trying to make tulip up for the sake of argument...

Did you not read my previous answer FFS?

It's like saying hey, why doesn't the software you are writing now read the whole database (500TB) into RAM now and speed it up?

IT full of ******* know it alls.

 

[AtW]

Jesus F Christ, the '90s are calling asking for their website back...

Software price is also from the 90s...