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Creo simulate using the memory as "hard drive"

KristeNiemelä
1-Newbie

Creo simulate using the memory as "hard drive"

Hello,

I have read that there is different kind of memory allocations for the Creo Simulate although the current Windows with 64-but can handle quite a big amount of memory in single machine. So my question in the Simulate use is that has anybody used the memory as hard drive? There are some commercial programs to change the memory look like a hard drive and using the working directory from the memory should be quite fast. Of course that means that in the computer there should be something like 100Gb memory (or more) installed, but that should also be much faster than any SSD disks currently. So using the "normal" 32 Gb as the computer memory and then creating the lets say f-drive from memory with 96 Gb should be quite fast for simulate use. If the solver etc. starts caching or swapping then the swapping would be done on the memory so the solram size should be quite meaningless..

If someone has the experience with this kind of settings, I would be appreciated of the shared experience about the equipment and how much faster the machine actually is, if the Simulate is working on memory.

- Kriste


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4 REPLIES 4

Creo simulate is just a program, like any other program that needs a lot of resources to run. Just do a quick internet search with "ram disk faster than ssd" and you'll have lots of answers. There are advantages to this idea, perhaps, but some dangers, too. For example, if power is interrupted, or your computer crashes, even if your simulation finished, you will have nothing, because RAM is volatile.

Hello Kenneth,

I have already read those articles about that the DDR3 is much faster than the SSD disks. I would like to have some comments about how much faster the DDR3 is in the Creo Simulate use, if someone would have the settings as I described. For the power interrupt we have all the computers behind the UPS so theoretically there should not be any crashes because of that. Also if the computer just crashes, then it needs to have the blue screen "effect" to crash so that all the data is lost from the RAM. With the ram disk programs, you can write the creo working directory data (and all the else in ram disk) into the ssd disk as iso file, when you shut down the computer. Next morning the program should automatically write the data back to ram disk, when you start the computer.

I would just appreciate the comments, if someone has built the computer to use ram disk for Creo simulate, perhaps telling how much faster the Creo simulate is in that way. Because the memory is not cheap, I need to justify the investment to our IT department...

- Kriste

Hi Steven,

We have had the same problems with the RAM and the use of it. The solram actulally doesn't need to be more than ~256Mb, because, if the working directory is located to RAM (DDR3), then the solram would swap to memory. I think that the program doesn't know the difference between actual hard drive and the ram drive, so if you have enough of memory, then you can fully use it with the Creo Simulate. I think that our best computer can handle 756Gb memory, so the ram hard drive can be big enough for all the Creo Simulations that we ever need to calculate. On my opinion the ram hard drive could be something around 64-96Gb, because the memory is still not cheap enough. But with the "actual" memory" 32Gb and then with the ram drive 96Gb the Simulate files that we drive should all be handled in that space, with all the temp files etc. without waiting the hard drive or SSD drive swapping the temp and result files. I would just like to have some (good) comments from some users that are using those settings, just to know how much time I would save. I need to justify this investment somehow to our IT department and saving time is saving money...

- Kriste

I've been using a RAM drive for temporary and results files for many years, going back to the days when Mechanica would only allocate 8 GB of SOLRAM and we'd just upgraded our machines to 24 GB (although remember than Mechanica can take more than the SOLRAM value in total, for large models).

In those days I measured a massive speed increase - from about 40 minutes down to 13 on one test case, which was almost entirely due to writing the results - the data appeared to be striped across about a dozen files, giving a heavy random access penalty on a mechanical hard drive.

With newer, faster hard drives, and especially SSDs, I think the advantage is decreasing - but if you've got the RAM to do it then why not?  On my current 32 GB system I quite often create a RAM drive (through a desktop shortcut pointing to an IMDisk script) just to use as temporary storage even outside Mechanica.

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