3DFlex currently runs without SSD?

Hi All,

At this moment 3DFlex does not run with SSD? At least 3DFlex Data Prep I am doing does not use SSD. Is there a reason why no SSD is being used?
I searched the forum but could not find a similar question. Maybe someone already explained somewhere?
Thanks!

The Data Prep job, which reads data only once, would see little benefit from SSD caching. It would be more relevant to Flex Training and Reconstruction.

From Computational Considerations:

  • 3DFlex does not yet use the CryoSPARC particle caching system. It reads particles directly from project directories in CPU RAM.

I assume the yet suggests that it’s being worked on.

Cheers,
Yang

Correct - 3DFlex jobs currently don’t use the SSD at all. Particles are prepared in the data prep job and then the training and reconstruction jobs read the entire particle stack straight to CPU RAM for processing. This is fast(est) but needs a lot of RAM. It’s on our list to change this so that particles are read on-the-fly from SSD during training and reconstruction.

Please make it possible to still choose RAM-storage when you make SSD-caching possible.

3 Likes

Seconded! We have several systems with a lot of memory, and it can make a big difference when everything is in RAM.