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Subject: Re: Tip: how to reduce hard drive churning with tablebases

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 19:42:27 03/11/04

Go up one level in this thread


On March 11, 2004 at 14:49:00, Matthew Hull wrote:

>On March 11, 2004 at 14:35:32, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On March 11, 2004 at 12:38:06, Vincent Lejeune wrote:
>>
>>>On March 11, 2004 at 11:19:49, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On March 10, 2004 at 13:49:01, Vincent Lejeune wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>Try this ATA flash disk, their access time is way more efficient than classical
>>>>>HD :o)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14635
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Not very big, _way_ expensive.  And still slower than SCSI on transfer rate...
>>>
>>>This product is way younger than SCSI too
>>>
>>>as i wrote in the follow up message (
>>>http://www.m-systems.com/content/Products/product.asp?pid=34 )
>>>
>>>_Access time:  <0.04 ms_ : so to read tablebase it should 100 times faster than
>>>SCSI disk
>>>
>>>I still to think this system will replace mechanical harddisk in some years ...
>>>
>>>
>>
>>People said the same thing about bubble memory when TI was actively working on
>>it.
>
>
>The mainframe world once had solid-state disks which were mainly used as page
>packs.  No one uses these anymore, AFAIK.  That tells me that it's either dog
>slow or just not cost effective (or both).  Disks are fast and dirt cheap now.
>
>

Big iron still does this.  IE Cray has had SSDs (solid state disks) for 20+
years.  The problem is density.  DRAM is dense, but nothing like a mag disk.
Ditto for flash devices...

>
>>
>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>On March 08, 2004 at 23:49:58, William Penn wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>Pretty simple. Reduce hash size. That's the only thing I've found to have a
>>>>>>significant effect when tablebase access starts to churn the hard drive
>>>>>>constantly. Engine speed (kN/s) falls dramatically at that point, perhaps to 10%
>>>>>>or less of normal speed, and never recovers. However using smaller hash size
>>>>>>appears to fix this problem.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>For example my computer has 1G RAM installed. I can run Shredder 8 with 768MB
>>>>>>hash normally, although I often use 512MB which the op system prefers a bit
>>>>>>more. Now one would think that 512MB hash would be OK in any situation with 1G
>>>>>>RAM, but not so. It's too much hash when tablebase access starts to crank up
>>>>>>heavy in endgame situations. At that point, reducing hash size to 256MB usually
>>>>>>fixes this problem, restoring engine speed to a reasonable kN/s. I haven't yet
>>>>>>found it necessary to goto 128MB hash.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>[Windows XP Home, Athlon XP 2400+/2.0GHz, 1G RAM]
>>>>>>WP



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