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I have reviewed the data from about twenty or so Gigapixel projects in the past year or two and most tend to through large numbers at the disc configuration problem, e.g. 3 x 2TB drives, while one carefully choose the size of the 4 drive groups: System, Temp, Data, Projects and surprisingly only one, the Paris 26GP, used 6 SSD drives exclusively, although they did not state how these where divided up. It would be great to hear more from Gigapixel Projects about what they learned about optimising systems in the course of putting together Gigapixel Panos?
I have read lots of posts in this forum about the use of SSDs, but I am still trying to determine what would be the best way to build the HDD/SDD resources to support Gigapixel work with APG and Photoshop together.
Often SSD disc(s) are recommended for system/program/pagefile, but is that necessary, maybe just for the pagefile yes, as all but 300Mb of that can be split of on to another drive, but if the only benefit of an SSD(s) for System/Program files is they load a bit quicker is that really worth the expense of SSD(s). A small SSD just for page file might suffice, or could the pagefile and temp file occupy the same SDD(s). I have seen a question raised about putting such intensive random access read/write process on SSD(s), as that may degrade the SSD. Most SSDs are not built for use on RAIDs and TRIM is not supported on RAIDs. There is an interesting review of SSD and RAID performance and degradation at http://macperformanceguide.com/SSD-RealWorld.html
Temporary files and Scratch discs are often mentioned, but is there anyway to tell how large the disc(s) will be needed for a given project. Let say for example a 10 Gigapixel project, what factors affect the size of the APG temp file space required, does it differ if you source files are JPeg vs Tiff?
What other APG processes are critally dependant on disc access and how much disc resources are necessary and what is the best way to optimise these to solve the bottlenecking problem?
The cost of SSD's and RAID capable drives can be the most expensive part of the system, it seems that many are experimenting but not really comparing real data on which to base decisions. I have a spreadsheet of the data on these projects that I gathered from the Gigapixel websites and some email replies from projects, I would like to share this on the Kolor site, if that is possible please let me know how.
Last edited by BrianLR (2011-04-05 21:34:15)
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I would welcome suggestions as to which of the following processes really benefit the most from the use of SSD and or HDD RAID 0:
Operating System (Windows 7 Pro 64bit)
Programs ( APG, DxO, CS5 Photoshop and Premiere Pro )
Pagefile
Temp files (APG )
Scratch Disc (Photoshop and Premiere Pro )
Data Files
Render Files
Project Files
Last edited by BrianLR (2011-04-09 05:14:32)
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Sorry Brian for the late reply
The more SSD's you can group together in a RAID-0 the faster, the onboard intel ICH-10 controller that most Intel board use, is pretty good for the number of connections it has, after that its down to the RAID controller you buy Areca and LSI are good choices if you want to go beyond 6 or more drives in one RAID.
I still think that you need to break your storage down into three groups, OS/APPs, TEMP/Scratch disk and Main Storage. Ok make it four with a backup as well. The system is only as fast as the slowest link, and in most cases HDD's are the slowest link, at least in current computers. Speed is nothing without reliability.
So from your above list, it would be simple to place things with these groups. What is harder is to choose the right hardware to ensure that all this run's smoothly. Depending on $$$ you make up what is the best setup vs $$$ spend, really fast is also really expensive. but I would definately put SSD's in for OS/APPs and for TEMP/Scratch disk, for Main storage and Back up I think you will be fine with fast HDD's in RAID-0 or RAID-01/10, you can make the backup an external unit, if you do not have room in your case.
Sorry for the late reply
Henrik
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Temporary files and Scratch discs are often mentioned, but is there anyway to tell how large the disc(s) will be needed for a given project. Let say for example a 10 Gigapixel project, what factors affect the size of the APG temp file space required, does it differ if you source files are JPeg vs Tiff?
PTGui can give you a required disk size, i am not sure (i don't know if APG can do it)
you can never have enough ;-)
Henrik
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May I suggest a site to do some research for SSDs
http://thessdreview.com/
It covers a lot of benchmarks and testing scenarios that may be useful. There are new drive coming that make RAID setups unnecessary for speed throughput according to their tests and reviews.
If this site has already been mentioned I'll apologize now for the duplicate info.
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Hi Lakes,
Excellent site
Do you have a link to the particular review.
thanks
Henrik
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From what I gather, for rendering APP/APG uses scratch when there is insufficient RAM in the folowing fashion:
It will start during warping, creating a file for every input-image in 32bpp. This equates to <images in> * <images in rez> * 4.
It will then work with these files and due to stacking etc the ammount of data will then go down again. This means max is reached after the warping stage.
I have tested this on a number of large panos and my largest was 2214 images of 16.2 Mpix each (3x stack). It reached 143 GB scratch.
It appears this works for full rez, but overestimates for anything less than 100% output size or if some input-images are not covered by selected area for render.
Can someone from Kolor confirm that this is a viable method of estimating scratch?
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Haven't done any proper testing, but can relate a couple of findings.
For my 45GP shot of Dubai last year, I needed just over 1TB of scratch space.
I've recently added a couple of 240GB Corsair Force Series 3 drives that I have pointed APG and Photoshop to to use as scratch. That brought the rendering time for a 5GP pano down by 50% (2+ hours down to around 1 hour 10 minutes) compared to using 300GB Velociraptors. Not using RAID, and I certainly won't be getting the most out of the SSD's from my Gigabyte EX58 UD5 motherboard.
i7 920 2.67 GHz
24GB RAM
Win64
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Wow gddxb!
I run a single 120 GB Force GT and my 6.1 Gpix pano overflowed to slow scratch.
It just finished rendering actually.
64 hours 36 minutes. But it is a heavy blend though. 3x stack makes for up to 12 images overlapping in corners and requiring a lot of blending.
I couldn't get larger than 4GB ram sticks though, and there is only 4 slots on this mainboard. Your extra ram probably has a huge impact too.
Blending was 61 hours and saving a 48 GB PSB file was 28 minutes.
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I'm just trying my first Gigapixel, I have a Mac Pro 2x3 Quad-Core with 9gB ram, I also added a SSD of 240GB where I put the 1000 Tiff files and also the temp APG files.... I use other HD to save the final file (218855 x 57497).
I launched the trace process 30h ago and in the activity monitor APG is using 700% of CPU and 5,4 Gb of ram, but the Warping bar in APG do not move... I don't know if this is normal, is there a way to know how many time is necessary to wait??
the source files are 16bit Tiff of 4928 × 3264
regards
-
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Apparently not
http://www.kolor.com/forum/t12750-highe … -rendering
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BrianLR wrote:
Often SSD disc(s) are recommended for system/program/pagefile, but is that necessary, maybe just for the pagefile yes, as all but 300Mb of that can be split of on to another drive, but if the only benefit of an SSD(s) for System/Program files is they load a bit quicker is that really worth the expense of SSD(s). A small SSD just for page file might suffice, or could the pagefile and temp file occupy the same SDD(s). I have seen a question raised about putting such intensive random access read/write process on SSD(s), as that may degrade the SSD. Most SSDs are not built for use on RAIDs and TRIM is not supported on RAIDs. There is an interesting review of SSD and RAID performance and degradation at http://macperformanceguide.com/SSD-RealWorld.html
This is an interesting article on SSD performance after a time of useage and for me, raises concerns in paying out £350.00 for a shiny high capacity, high performance SSD that may not continue with the expected performance even on a PC platform with TRIM supported.
Would a couple or so of WD's RAID Enterprise HDD's in RAID be better placed as an alternative to SSD if reliabilty of the SSD's is in question? Similiar cost, slightly less performance perhaps but longer term more reliable?
I would be interested in Tived's and the other hardware junkies thoughts on this!
BrianLR wrote:
I have a spreadsheet of the data on these projects that I gathered from the Gigapixel websites and some email replies from projects, I would like to share this on the Kolor site, if that is possible please let me know how.
Did you ever post this information Brian?
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Well, I have seen multiple tests of teh SandForce 2xxx based disks that hold up well after use.
I myself has already ran my Force GT 120 GB through it's paces hard on Win7. Some of my projects have written multiple terabytes to the disk now.
See attached image for a quick benchtest done just for you UK Pano.
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IgnacioFerrando wrote:
I'm just trying my first Gigapixel, I have a Mac Pro 2x3 Quad-Core with 9gB ram, I also added a SSD of 240GB where I put the 1000 Tiff files and also the temp APG files.... I use other HD to save the final file (218855 x 57497).
I launched the trace process 30h ago and in the activity monitor APG is using 700% of CPU and 5,4 Gb of ram, but the Warping bar in APG do not move... I don't know if this is normal, is there a way to know how many time is necessary to wait??
the source files are 16bit Tiff of 4928 × 3264
regards
-
Hi!
Don´t use TIFFs in that case. Use JPG in high quality. 1000 Tiff images (i hope you used 8bit instead of 16bit) is a bit heavy . . . Using a 240 GB SSD and putting 1000 Tiff files AND the temp on it can´t work sufficiently in my eyes. Let the images on a regular HD and use the SSD for temp only! I guess it will be used completely . . . maybe you´d have to add some more SSD.
best, Klaus
Last edited by klausesser (2011-08-05 17:42:14)
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KreAture wrote:
See attached image for a quick benchtest done just for you UK Pano.
Lol! Awwhh, shucks you shouldn't have done that just for me 
Looks to be functioning quite well at those speeds after being used as you have said.
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If at a later time I need more space (if my panos go beyond 2000 images input on a regular basis) I will add another 120 GB disk and raid them.
Currently I am running cluster sizes of 32k but I could run up to 64k since it's NTFS. I wonder what operations are used in APx?
Might have to test 4(default),8,16,32 and 64 just to see who gives the best random access speed, as that seems to be the most important. There are a LOT of threads running in paralell, all of which seem to access a bunch of files at the same time.
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