I have a pci-e based storage working at close to 1000mb/s (Mac Pro). I do lots of GCC/make compilations. What if you want things even faster than with a pcie? Then ramdisk is your friend.

My results:

• With Regular SSD:  2 minutes and 37 seconds   (on my co-worker’s machine w/Fedora)
• With my pci-e disk: 2 minutes and 35 seconds (my Mac w/Fedora)
• With Ramdisk:           1 minute and 15 seconds (my Mac w/Fedora)

So we have ~50% improvement in compilation time. For me, it’s worth the effort.

To set one up: Follow this guide

I.e:

[code language='bash']
sudo mkdir /mnt/ramdisk
sudo mount -t tmpfs -o size=2G tmpfs /mnt/ramdisk
[/code]

To see how much of it is still available:

df -h

You might want to write an rsync script to copy folders onto the ramdisk that you want fast-access to. Ex a git repo that you compile frequently, some application binaries that you run. But obviously avoid putting data onto the disk.