Parallel disk processing in PixInsight (setup) questions

[dpastern]

Hey Guys,

So...as far as I understood, setting up the parallel processing option inside PixInsight was as simple as, pointing PI to use a disk X amount of times.  The general consensus being that X equals the amount of cores that your CPU has.  So, if I have a 8 core CPU, then create 8 references to a disk that you want to use to enable parallel IO processing in PI. 

So...I have a spare SSD (120GB) with a 4 core CPU i7 3820.  The disk is not being used for anything else.  I edited the preferences and pointed 4 references to the SSD inside PI and then ran the benchmark script.  You can see the results of the benchmark run under PI 1.8.8-4 (it's the only 3820 entry).  If I'm using the 120GB disk, why is the swap only showing as 2195?  I also used the Windows disk management tool to partition the SSD into 4 roughly equal partitions, and tied them into PI, no changes, in fact, even worse performance (I didn't upload that benchmark as it was 600 points lower in performance). 

What am I doing wrong?  What am I misunderstanding?

Cheers,

Dave

[Pierre]

There is a limit that HD hardware puts on the speed of write and read of the drive. Just adding either partitions or files to the drive does not change this. Once you hit the limit, you are done. To increase your speed you have to have separate swap files on separate drives. Even in doing this you will still hit a hard limit, as the MB has transfer limits as well.  I was hoping to post a screen shot of the page but the forum did not allow.
Go the Edit - Global Preferences - Directories and Networks
On the right side you will see “Swap storage directories”
Here you will add the file location of your swap files that you have made up on EACH drive, 1 per drive only.
Have tried 1 per drive and even with 3 drives I hit the wall, but replace the drives with Ramdisk and now you step up to another level!
Pierre

[dpastern]

Hi Pierre,

Thanks for explaining it to me.  I'll try it with the current SSD, the o/s SSD and I'll see if I can create a RAM drive.  That gives me 3 tempfs points. 

Then I'll re-test.

Cheers,

Dave