Cryptocurrencies, fad or future?

David Brown wrote in news:pt0rv2$pu5$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

Yes, the RAM disk is one less layer (no computing layer, storage/IO layer) between the cpu and a large set of data.

It is for intermediate bulk scratch files that you want to be as fast as possible and don't care too much about their longevity. Any failure is completely disastrous to data integrity but it is the fastest option. Likewise with using fast but dangerous write caching and a UPS.

They tend to be a bit on the big side for leaving in ram unless you are absolutely made of money. Some of the chess endgame working files can be multi-terabyte sizes. Research into 8 man bases is ~1000TB compressed. eg.

If people only used RAID0 for that, there would be no problem. It is not often that you have temporary files that are big enough to warrant a raid system, but I it happens.

Sure, /some/ temporary files are big. But what about the .raw files from LT ?

.RAW can be gigabytes, if you have a fairly complex circuit and run small time steps.

So a ram disk may or may not be the answer, depending on the computer and the circuit.

A compressed ram disk may be better - if this "raw" file is a dump of measurements, these usually compress very well. Modern PC's often have more cores than they know what to do with, so the cpu overhead is negligible.

Something like a circuit or em simulation benefits from more compute power. I think that other classes of sims get little benefit from petaflop resources, or might even suffer from having more compute power applied. Higher priced GIGO.

Well, the main way you can suffer from having more grunt available is if you use it as a substitute for thought.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

John Larkin wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

You really do have zero grasp of the high end. GIGO?

You're an idiot. Supercomputers are not tasked with GIGO, dipshit.

Have you never watched weather radar on your TV or phone? Where do you think those tracking resolves and predictions come from?

This is true, right up until the time you exchange the coins for actual currency you can do something useful other than buy illegal s*it online with. Once you do that, someone's going to want to know where those funds came from, and the entire history of the Bitcoin side of it is right there in the blockchain. It's pseudonymous at best.