Compiling with MPIDE on Mac OS SSD

Created Sat, 25 Apr 2015 22:28:20 +0000 by Jacob Christ

Jacob Christ

Sat, 25 Apr 2015 22:28:20 +0000

I have a student that is using MPIDE with a SSD on a Mac and he was wondering if compiling on his computer would cause a lot of wear on the drive? I have heard that SSD wear leveling has gotten better over the years but I also know of drives being destroyed pretty quickly several years ago.

If wear is an issue , is there a way to compile using RAM disk on a Mac?

Jacob

majenko

Sat, 25 Apr 2015 23:41:55 +0000

Compilation is normally done in /tmp

I can't vouch for OS X, but in general on Linux if you have enough RAM you configure /tmp to be a ramdisk. I would imagine something similar is done on OS X.

EmbeddedMan

Tue, 28 Apr 2015 18:22:28 +0000

I don't remember exactly where, but I recently read a report on consumer class SSDs that showed how they survived over time with brutal read/write cycles. All of them performed far longer than their rated life expectancy, and were on par with rotating disks. I would not worry at all about MPIDE's effect on the SSD.

*Brian

Jacob Christ

Tue, 28 Apr 2015 19:52:28 +0000

Here is a podcast with Chuck Peddle talking about the next thing he is working on (SSD with dram and super caps). The d-ram is used while the machine is on and when power is lost, supercaps move whats in dram to flash.

http://www.theamphour.com/241-an-interview-with-chuck-peddle-charismatic-chipmaking-coryphaeus/

Jacob

GrahamM242

Wed, 29 Apr 2015 11:01:07 +0000

I don't remember exactly where, but I recently read a report on consumer class SSDs that showed how they survived over time with brutal read/write cycles.

I'd guess that this was from TechReport - that links to the conclusion. Upshot was that consumer drives can probably manage around 700TB of writes before you see problems. Some even pushed beyond 2PB of writes!