Ramdisk for orthomosaic

I am going to buy a new workstation. If I chose a xeon platform it allows me to work with 256 go of ram for example. I am wondering if we place a ramdisk which contains the p4d files, will it boost the third step?
Is the last intel ssd with nvme support are a better choice? raid of normal ssd?

Hello Julien,

Ramdisk is faster than SSD, we suggest SSD and some users, having a super computer, they mount Raid SSD and they experience some increase in speed in the step 3, and in general for the use of many things.

We do not have any device with Ramdisk so we have not tested, but potentially should be faster but we do not know how much more and if it is worth then the investment.

At the same time, it will have more impact for large datasets or datasets with large images, but we are preparing changes for step 3 that will require less disk interaction and better results.

Regards,

Hello Marc,

I have set up a new system but am wondering what Pix4d stance is on Ramdisk is these days? Pros & Cons wrt Pix4d desktop

Current specs

  • AMD X399 Gaming Pro Carbon AC MoBo
  • AMD Ryzen 1950X Threadripper 16 core 32 threads
  • 64gb Ram
  • Geforce GTX 1080ti GPU

Thanks Marc

Troy

Hi Troy, 

I am not aware of any user feedback regarding the usage of ramdisk, I also do not think we did any tests internally for that.

The hard drive has its biggest impact on step 3. DSM, Orthomosaic and Index. There are some improvements when passing from a standard hard drive to a SSD, so there might be improvements when using ramdisk. If you ever test it, please share your findings in the community. 

Here is an article about processing speed that might help: https://support.pix4d.com/hc/en-us/articles/204191535

Regarding the hardware specs, I would recommend to read these two community posts on the subject: 
AMD Ryzen 7 computer for Pix4D
- Pix4D Computer hardware community benchmark