Optimal Hardware setup for IDEA?

Hi,

does anybody know how well IDEA utilizes hardware? I am running under linux ubuntu. How well does squeeze out multicore processors (1 vs 2 vs 4  core)? What about 64 vs. 32 bit?

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- don't use encrypted  drive for intellij index storage
- best upgrade you could get is solid state drive.
I run x64 ubuntu(using x32 jvm though)  and have no performance problems, I would say less than when Iused to use windows.

cheers,

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I would recommend 2 or 4 cores. Multithreading is used intensively in IDEA.
Fast HDD is a must have, too.

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I also don't have major performance problems but want to upgrade in a sensible way :) IDEA and software development (application development in java) are my biggest requirements where I need machine power.

Regarding SSD: Their read performance is astonishing but I heard that write operation can even be slower than normal magnetic harddrive. Thinking of that compilation often creates and updates files I doubt that one gets a performance boost using SSD for the codebase files? I can think of SSD helping on system partition but not on projects. Do your really feel a boost using SSD for your intellij projects?

I also perceived a major boost when switching to linux from yucky windows-days. The filesystems of windows are exteremly slow and a joke.

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Seeing that you are from jetbrains. Did you have a chance to benchmark test HDD solid-state vs. magnetical? What about benchmarks 2 vs. 4 cores. I know it also depends on the "kind" of software you develop but maybe you did some general performance tests?

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Buy a decent SSD (e.g. Intel) and be done. Single most important thing you can do to your dev machine (despite having 4GB+ RAM).

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I've just done some benchmarks for indexing in IDEAX, and in this area good
HDD matches SSD easily.
But startup time and overall responsiveness of application is better with
SSD.
Stay tuned to http://blogs.jetbrains.com/idea/ to see exact results of the
benchmarks.

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I see.

So SSD boost-up is for read-only access (like application-installation itself + built index + settings), but not for the compilation process (write access to filesystem).

Can't wait the benchmark results :)

Other interesting benchmark measurements would be:
- number of cores
- min/max-size of heap (currently I have -Xmx1024m). E.g. does it scale to increase beyond 2GB? Or is this just waste and does not have any impact?

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From my experience, Xmx 700 mb (recommended maximum) is enough.

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Couldn't agree more!  The performance and productivity gains of getting a decent SSD (and it has to be decent) are amazing.

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