==== tmpfs - a temporary file system ====

On many UNIX platforms a tmpfs can be used for storing data in volatile memory that behaves like an ordinary mount point in the file system
([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tmpfs]]). 

In cases, where jobs are doing a lot of i/o operations on certain files, transfering files into the tmpfs can have advantages: 

  - Faster file access.
  - Reduction of file server load.
  - Speed up of calculations. 

However, space used by files in the tmpfs is no longer available for user processes. So for memory intensive jobs, scratch data might be stored
elsewhere.

=== VSC-2 ===

On VSC-2 the compute nodes have a tmpfs mounted on /tmp. Currently /tmp is set to default size which is 50% of the available memory of the nodes, i.e. 16 GB.
For using /tmp a sample job would be:


<code>
#$ -N test

cd <INPUT_DIR>
cp -r * /tmp
cd /tmp

./a.out

cp -r * <OUT_DIR>

</code>