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From: mohta@necom830.cc.titech.ac.jp (Masataka Ohta)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Real disk FASTER than Ram disk
Message-ID: <5461@titcce.cc.titech.ac.jp>
Date: 25 May 90 09:54:15 GMT
References: <1990May22.174627.11610@hcr.uucp> <637@sibyl.eleceng.ua.OZ>
Sender: news@cc.titech.ac.jp
Reply-To: mohta@necom830.cc.titech.ac.jp (Masataka Ohta)
Organization: Tokyo Institute of Technology
Lines: 18

In article <637@sibyl.eleceng.ua.OZ> ian@sibyl.OZ (Ian Dall) writes:

>If the 386 is a real computer, what use is a ram disk? Increase the
>disk block cache to 4MB. That should be just as fast(*) and much more
>flexible.

Ram disk is actually effective when many sync writes are issued, such as
compilation of many small files.

But, even in such a case, there is a better solution than memory disk
approach. See my paper of the next USENIX.

>(*) It might even be faster.

Yes.

						Masataka Ohta
						mohta@cc.titech.ac.jp