There is always the possibility of paging RAM to disk at any point for any bit of memory and this goes for something like pix_buffer or Pd's table/array too. Obviously, the machine needs to have not only the free memory for the RAM disk but a comfortable amount of headroom.
The OSX memory manager won't always do the right thing, but one can try to minimize its stupidity. A lot of the kernel code is still based on assumptions about ancient hardware and non-existent server scenarios, and it certainly pays the price for it.
On 7/30/07, Max Neupert <abonnements@revolwear.com
> wrote:
hi,
some sources suggest that there is no or little advantage to use a
ramdisk in os x because the system caches data which has frequent
access anyway.
so a ramdisk can be counterproductive in a cenario where you have
little ram:
lets say you have one gig memory. 300 mb are used by some
applications which are open, and another 300 by the system. now you
have a video in your ramdisk of also 300. the system tries to cache
it because it wants to accellerate but can't allocate enough anymore
and data will be swaped on the harddisk..
so you end up with less performance and more harddrive access because
of the ramdisk..
i'm curious about your findings.
greetings, m.
http://lowendmac.com/x-basics/02/0201.html
http://www.kernelthread.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=138