Trade Off between Memory and Looping
Posted: 01 Nov 2016, 20:39
Trade Off between Running in Memory, and Looping giving rise to Extra CPU Load
Normally run Porteus Base in RAM, but recently had occasion to run the Base Modules (kernel, core, xorg, cinnamon) from a Loop. In the latter case, like to think of this as running at two remove, while in the former case the loops are running directly, at zero remove, in memory. If looping Base Modules unpacked on to a hard disk or USB, then this could be seen as running at one remove, involving i/o to hdd or USB. However the variant that was run involved looping ISO file on hard disk and then looping the Base Modules, thereby one more layer of i/o being involved, and so running at two remove. Full Description of both Setups to be found here: viewtopic.php?f=94&p=49986#p49986
Surprised to find hardly any difference in performance between running Porteus Base Modules in RAM, and running them from an ISO file. The only time did notice a difference was when copying a large file ~500M when the disk light unexpectedly glowed a steady red until the copy was over, which took somewhat longer longer than usual.
However numbers pan out when running an embedded Flash Video:
The trade off involved 260M of memory (base modules occupancy), so that when running from ISO an extra 260M/879M(total RAM) became available.
Normally run Porteus Base in RAM, but recently had occasion to run the Base Modules (kernel, core, xorg, cinnamon) from a Loop. In the latter case, like to think of this as running at two remove, while in the former case the loops are running directly, at zero remove, in memory. If looping Base Modules unpacked on to a hard disk or USB, then this could be seen as running at one remove, involving i/o to hdd or USB. However the variant that was run involved looping ISO file on hard disk and then looping the Base Modules, thereby one more layer of i/o being involved, and so running at two remove. Full Description of both Setups to be found here: viewtopic.php?f=94&p=49986#p49986
Surprised to find hardly any difference in performance between running Porteus Base Modules in RAM, and running them from an ISO file. The only time did notice a difference was when copying a large file ~500M when the disk light unexpectedly glowed a steady red until the copy was over, which took somewhat longer longer than usual.
However numbers pan out when running an embedded Flash Video:
- Memory Usage
- RAM Modules
Code: Select all
guest@porteus:~$ free -m total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 879 596 62 25 221 88 Swap: 644 463 180
- ISO Modules
Code: Select all
guest@porteus:~$ free -m total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 879 519 94 21 265 169 Swap: 644 39 605
- RAM Modules
- CPU Load
- RAM Modules
Code: Select all
Tasks: 154 total, 3 running, 151 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie %Cpu(s): 75.4 us, 13.0 sy, 0.0 ni, 10.6 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 1.0 si, 0.0 st KiB Mem : 900936 total, 60100 free, 610448 used, 230388 buff/cache KiB Swap: 660152 total, 184976 free, 475176 used. 90880 avail Mem PID USER %CPU %MEM COMMAND 1942 guest 44.4 28.4 palemoon 7867 guest 20.9 8.6 plugin-cont+ 1422 guest 11.9 7.2 cinnamon 1176 root 8.6 1.6 Xorg 1322 guest 2.3 0.3 pulseaudio 7901 guest 0.3 0.3 top
- ISO Modules
Code: Select all
Tasks: 159 total, 2 running, 157 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie %Cpu(s): 84.1 us, 13.2 sy, 0.0 ni, 1.3 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 1.3 si, 0.0 st KiB Mem : 900936 total, 67692 free, 600164 used, 233080 buff/cache KiB Swap: 660152 total, 596792 free, 63360 used. 104824 avail Mem PID USER %CPU %MEM COMMAND 3331 guest 61.9 11.4 plugin-cont+ 1936 guest 20.2 33.6 palemoon 1165 root 7.0 3.9 Xorg 1410 guest 6.3 7.7 cinnamon 1291 guest 2.3 0.6 pulseaudio
- RAM Modules
The trade off involved 260M of memory (base modules occupancy), so that when running from ISO an extra 260M/879M(total RAM) became available.