> And you certainly don't want to system to swap in and out gigabytes of memory.
Why though?
Swapping 32GB of memory in and out of an NVMe SSD is much faster than swapping 1GB out of a spinning disk so I really don't get that argument.
Why though?
Swapping 32GB of memory in and out of an NVMe SSD is much faster than swapping 1GB out of a spinning disk so I really don't get that argument.
This is true, but it still takes time. What kind of workload do you have where you swap out 32GB of RAM? If you are in this situation you almost certainly need to buy these additional 32GB of RAM.
As an example of such workload: a server, one of the many, that runs financial calculations from many web users. It's fine for it to become somewhat slower: we'll notice the performance degradation in the metrics and stop accepting new connections for a while. It is not fine for it to just die with OOM ― the users automatically will reconnect to other servers, leading to a sort of a thundering herd scenario.
Then you obviously have a workload where having swap make sense (and you could even add swap on the fly in such a case). But that is not typical at all.
If you have enough money to provision NVMe and still swap multiple gigabytes, just get a 16GB RAM stick for $40.
Laptops come with soldered RAM now where upgrades are not possible. And most people use laptops nowadays instead of desktops.
Buying another laptop to double your ram just because you hit the swap once in a blue moon is kinda wasteful.
What if you from time to time you only swap a couple of GB? Isn't that better than having your system completely lock up and need rebooting?
Why should I pay $40 when I have way more than 16GB of free SSD storage on my computer already?!
> it is still more than an order of magnitude slower than RAM, and is harmful for the disk cells.
I mean, if that's not an issue for you, be my guest. But that's not the global optimum.
Reusing hardware you already have clearly feels more optimal than buying new one because it makes things unnoticeably slower.
I treat my 1TB SSD like a loaner and after doing the math, based on my write patterns in the last 2 years, the SSD should wear out in about ..checks notes.. 12 years. I'm a lot more likely to replace it 2-4 years though to upgrade to a bigger and faster model anyway.
Plus, all storage dies eventually, that's why backups are important. You paid for it, you might as well make the most use of it while it lasts instead of trying to "hypermile it" since you won't be leaving it as inheritance to your grandchildren.
If you're wearing out your SSD life endurance in a few years, you have an issue.