Date: Mon, 21 Feb 94 16:15:20 EST
From: peprbv AT cfa0 DOT harvard DOT edu (Bob Babcock)
To: raymond AT hef DOT kun DOT nl
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject: Re: RAM drive
Reply-To: babcock AT cfa DOT harvard DOT edu

> Hi, I've been trying to improve on compilation time by making a RAM drive.

Swapping to a RAM drive isn't likely to be any faster than having that memory
directly available, and your timing results show that it is much slower.  The
only way a RAM disk can speed things up is if you load programs and include
files from there.  I find this helps, but I've got 16MB of memory.  The other
question is what CPU type and speed are you using?  I'd expect a trivial
program to compile in a few seconds on a 486DX/33, but on a 386SX/16 you
might lose very roughly three factors of two, one from clock rate, one from
CPU type and one from bus width for a total of 8x longer compilations.