Mesa's Shader Cache Will Now Occupy Less Disk Space

[shmerl]

I think the cache should be automatically wiped, if version mismatch is detected.

[eydee]

Am I the only one that things that disk caching is a really bad idea. Or mabey its for people still using HDDs with very limited drive bandwith, or that hard drives, and especially solid state drives have limited lives and this might thrash a disk or two?

An SSD can survive for decades before it wears out. Let's be pessimistic and say using a disk cache will decrease it's life span from 30 years to 29 years. Will you be using your SSD in 29 years? Will you be even able to connect it to motherboards then? Will it not break for some other reason a lot sooner?

[TheBlackCat]

An SSD can survive for decades before it wears out. Let's be pessimistic and say using a disk cache will decrease it's life span from 30 years to 29 years. Will you be using your SSD in 29 years? Will you be even able to connect it to motherboards then? Will it not break for some other reason a lot sooner?

There are certainly computers that fit that criteria, but I doubt those are heavy mesa users.

[Guest]

I think the cache should be automatically wiped, if version mismatch is detected.

I second this, pretty sure that this is default behavior with nvidia drivers.

[LeJimster]

Kinda sucks if the cache is on a small system drive. I haven't looked into it with too much detail though and I'm not sure how much space is really needed for caching in modern titles.

[starshipeleven]

I think the cache should be automatically wiped, if version mismatch is detected.

AFAIK this is already happening.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

The very first SSD had those problems but now it's a thing from the past that many think still is present.
I do think 5% is very much, if i have an 3TB hdd then 5% is to much and it should have an max limit rather the %.
I haven't played with shader cache and don't know how much it will use and how fast, i only thought 5% can be a very vast amount och space.

Seriously? Some games can install hundreds upon hundreds of gigabytes of crap on the drive and you're complaining about 5%?

[smitty3268]

AFAIK this is already happening.

I don't think it is, because of all the different libs sharing the same cache, right? Or did they fix it?

For example, OpenGL 32-bit, OpenGL 64-bit, Nine, etc. might all have different versions associated with them and you don't want to wipe out your 64-bit cache just because you launched a 32-bit game.

They do delete old entries first once the max cache size is hit, so the old cache from older versions would get removed eventually that way.

[starshipeleven]

I don't think it is, because of all the different libs sharing the same cache, right? Or did they fix it?

For example, OpenGL 32-bit, OpenGL 64-bit, Nine, etc. might all have different versions associated with them and you don't want to wipe out your 64-bit cache just because you launched a 32-bit game.

They do delete old entries first once the max cache size is hit, so the old cache from older versions would get removed eventually that way.

???? shaders run on GPU, why the arch/bits of the processor is relevant? I don't know about Nine.

What I meant above is that the cached stuff becomes invalid if there is a Mesa version mismatch (like after you updated Mesa).

[Nille_kungen]

Seriously? Some games can install hundreds upon hundreds of gigabytes of crap on the drive and you're complaining about 5%?

I never had a game like that but you can probably give an example of a game installing crap on a drive.
You do understand that 5% can be over hundred gigabytes, what is 5% of an 3TB hdd that was used as an example in the post you quoted?
There has been another article posted on phoronix about 1GB cache limit.

http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Mesa-Patch-1GB-Cache-Limit