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madMAx43v3r / chia-plotter

Apache License 2.0
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Feature Request / Exploration: Partial Ramdisk #337

Open jwest75674 opened 3 years ago

jwest75674 commented 3 years ago

Firstly, great work on this!

My setup is all Linux, but this likely applies generally too. Of my plotters, I have one machine with only 64GB of memory. For machines like this, which have less than the required memory for tmp2 to run on a ramdisk, is there a recommended approach to benefit from the ~60GB of free memory with this plotter?

For my own use I was thinking about setting up something like dm-cache, bcache, or flashcash using the ramdisk as the cache device over nvme storage, but not 100% this makes sense.

A feature request along this path would be tmpdir3 == tmpdir2-overflow or some type of "tmp2 is full, so do this" input.

My apologies if this request overlaps a feature which I simply missed!

gairom commented 3 years ago

+1 I also have 64GB RAM and wonder if it can be utilized...

grayfallstown commented 3 years ago

Well, if there is a tool that allows to create a ramdisk that can be converted into a dynamic disk (on windows), then you can create a 112 GB expanded disk that starts in ram and ends on your nvme disk, which would increase the thee plot creation speed quite a bit. Tell me which ram disk creation toolkit lets you create a ramdisk that can be converted to a dynamic disk if you find one.

stotiks commented 3 years ago

Maybe PrimoCache can help to create small nvme drive with large ram cache

grayfallstown commented 3 years ago

Maybe PrimoCache can help to create small nvme drive with large ram cache

PrimoCache is not great if you have sustained write. It is only an improvement with write and then pause as it wil pause any write while it flushes the cache. Do not use PrimoCache with any sustained write like chia plotting. It will be slower than using the drive as it is (talking from experience tinkering with PrimoCache and similar tools a lot.)

grayfallstown commented 3 years ago

Do not use PrimoCache or a similar tool for sustained writes like while chia plotting. Talking from experience here. PrimoCache and likewise make sense if you have write pauses. Not while plotting.

madMAx43v3r commented 3 years ago

it's possible to do 40 GB ramdisk for phase 3 only yes, I will think about it