cpu-ram-storage matrix for builds

B

balanga

I want to do quite a number of builds and am trying work out the best combination of cpu, ram and storage for running make buildworld which tends to take between 1.5 and 3 hrs depending on where it is being run. Out of these three factors what would provide the biggest gain more ram or faster disk? cpu is a limitation because it isn't something I'm going to replace so I presume my ThinkCentre M92p with it's i3-3220T CPU @ 2.80GHz would be preferable to my ThinkPad X220 i7-2620M CPU @ 2.70GHz given that the amounts of ram and disks were the same spec.... although I guess I should also take into account the number of cores, but I'm not sure how to display that.

Any advice appreciated.
 
balanga said:
Out of these three factors what would provide the biggest gain more ram or faster disk?
Click to expand...
Faster I/O appears to have the most effect. More memory is always good of course but I haven't noticed any significant improvements with regards to my poudriere builds when I updated my server from 8 to 16GB. Things ran smoother during a build but the builds themselves didn't improve much.
 
More memory is useful if you use it to create a memdisk. No need for a fast and expensive SSD to do builds if you have enough memory to create a large enough memdisk.
Memory can also be used for ZFS cache, which makes compiling faster as well. I don't know if make buildworld can use ccache, that also improves things
if you're going to compile the same files over and over.

But, if you're already maxing out what your CPU can handle the gains will be smaller I guess.
 
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