Nexus 9 uses F2FS filesystem by default!

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edgarf28

Senior Member
Nov 15, 2007
3,844
13,044
The Nexus 9 uses the F2FS (flash-friendly) filesystem as default, instead of EXT4! (see attached screenshot)

Also notice the 508 MB Swap partition in the screenshot...
 

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bushgreen

Member
Oct 17, 2014
13
0
The Nexus 9 uses the F2FS (flash-friendly) filesystem as default, instead of EXT4! (see attached screenshot)

Also notice the 508 MB Swap partition in the screenshot...

Can you do a androbench benchmark please i want to know the storage performance

---------- Post added at 06:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:48 PM ----------

The Nexus 9 uses the F2FS (flash-friendly) filesystem as default, instead of EXT4! (see attached screenshot)

Also notice the 508 MB Swap partition in the screenshot...

What is the swap file used for, is it for the cpu, does it use the ram?

The thing has the fastest set up it should be the most smoothest device ever made.

64 bit tegra k1 with geekbench single core performance of 2000 almost double that snapdragon 801.
Fastest internal storage chip. 15MB random write and 38MB random read.
Android lollipop
F2fs filesystem
2gb ram

---------- Post added at 06:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:03 PM ----------

Can you do a androbench benchmark please i want to know the storage performance

---------- Post added at 06:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:48 PM ----------



What is the swap file used for, is it for the cpu, does it use the ram?

The thing has the fastest set up it should be the most smoothest device ever made.

64 bit tegra k1 with geekbench single core performance of 2000 almost double that snapdragon 801.
Fastest internal storage chip. 15MB random write and 38MB random read.
Android lollipop
F2fs filesystem
2gb ram
.

..
 

edgarf28

Senior Member
Nov 15, 2007
3,844
13,044
Can you do a androbench benchmark please i want to know the storage performance

---------- Post added at 06:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:48 PM ----------



What is the swap file used for, is it for the cpu, does it use the ram?

The thing has the fastest set up it should be the most smoothest device ever made.

64 bit tegra k1 with geekbench single core performance of 2000 almost double that snapdragon 801.
Fastest internal storage chip. 15MB random write and 38MB random read.
Android lollipop
F2fs filesystem
2gb ram

---------- Post added at 06:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:03 PM ----------

.

..

The 508 MB Swap partition do not use any RAM, I think it's just an partition on the internal memory to extent the RAM with 508 MB (so basically you have 1.8 Gb RAM + 508 MB Swap)

And see attached screenshot for the AndroBench results.
 

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a user

Senior Member
Jan 11, 2011
4,894
2,032
it is just plain stupid putting only 2GB ram on a 64Bit device and then helping out with 500MB swap. They could have easily add 3GB ram without any significant costs..

Funny thing is that the nexus 6 has 3GB ram and has a variant with 64GB disk.
 

farmerbb

Senior Member
Oct 9, 2011
459
346
Somewhere, Utah
Looks like f2fs is only used on the encrypted /data partition, /system and /cache still use ext4.

Also, the Nexus 9 actually has zram enabled, which explains the swap "partition". Having 2GB of memory with 0.5GB of zram is an interesting alternative to just using 3GB of memory instead.
 

a user

Senior Member
Jan 11, 2011
4,894
2,032
Looks like f2fs is only used on the encrypted /data partition, /system and /cache still use ext4.

Also, the Nexus 9 actually has zram enabled, which explains the swap "partition". Having 2GB of memory with 0.5GB of zram is an interesting alternative to just using 3GB of memory instead.

no, it is not an interesting alternative, it is a stupid one in every way. the nexus 9 is already quite expensive. 1GB ram just costs a couple of dollars and room is more than enough within. and considering it is 64Bit it will bloat up ram usage anyway, not to forget that this high screen resolution eats up a lot of ram, too.
 

FrankBullitt

Senior Member
Sep 25, 2010
409
325
Mafra, Portugal
no, it is not an interesting alternative, it is a stupid one in every way. the nexus 9 is already quite expensive. 1GB ram just costs a couple of dollars and room is more than enough within. and considering it is 64Bit it will bloat up ram usage anyway, not to forget that this high screen resolution eats up a lot of ram, too.

It's stupid until you realize how channeling works. The option to user zram is a very interesting one and it might be a better solution. So far benchmarks of the tablet agree with HTC/Google.

EDIT: also, in a serialized "queue" architecture like the this 64bit K1 with 2 cores, multitasking is not the priority. 2GB + zRam or 3GB should not make much difference.
Google opted for this kind of CPU in the N9 to make it as fast as an ipad air2 on your active task. You don't have multiple windows, you won't do true multitasking in this tablet. This is an ipad alternative, and even these architectural details show it.
 
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a user

Senior Member
Jan 11, 2011
4,894
2,032
It's stupid until you realize how channeling works. The option to user zram is a very interesting one and it might be a better solution. So far benchmarks of the tablet agree with HTC/Google.

EDIT: also, in a serialized "queue" architecture like the this 64bit K1 with 2 cores, multitasking is not the priority. 2GB + zRam or 3GB should not make much difference.
Google opted for this kind of CPU in the N9 to make it as fast as an ipad air2 on your active task. You don't have multiple windows, you won't do true multitasking in this tablet. This is an ipad alternative, and even these architectural details show it.

a lot of unrelated stuff in your post. there is no need for zram or swap (regarding the first posts its swap and not compressed ram, but i do not know myself what it is) if you get an extra 1GB of ram. 1 GB of ram is ALWAYS better than zram or swap. zram is a nice option when you cannot extend the memory for various reasons and swap may be used for heigh memory use cases when you have some not too slow alternate memory. n9 internal memory is still damn slow for swapping (if it is indeed a swap faile on disk at all).

but actually there seems to be no good reason to not add an extra GB as we can see the nexus 6 has it, the nexus 9 ha definetly room for it (it is not like pc dram module) and it is damn cheap also.

secondly, i'm not talking about multitasking when i pointed out 64bit, so why the hell are you bringing this in? beside of that on a tablet multitasking it meanwhile not so uncommen. the point is that a 64 bit os has a MUCH larger memory footprint. also such high screen resolutions add a decent amount of memory either. and finally, your argument about benchmarks proving anything related to my comment is unrelated at best. it doesn't prove anything related to my statement.

there is aboluelty no reason to prefere zram or swap over an extra GB of ram, and it seems that there is nothing that would made it difficult for htc to add it. i can only assume that they added this just collect some experience on it and nothing more.

i really don't get it. what's the purpose of your statement? showing of your lack of knowledge or celebrating fanboyship "oh cool, they skipped a 5$ GB ram but gave us zram hurayyyyy".

sounds totally sound to give a smartphone 1GB ram more, same high resoltion on a smaller screen and twice as much disk space :rolleyes:


EDIT: but please finally tell us WHAT exactly is so "interessting" adding zram or swap instead of one GB ram? you post has no information except this little claim. one might find this decision interesting of course due to its stupidity but it doesn't look that this is the source of your interest.
 
Last edited:

UAL4588

Senior Member
Feb 16, 2011
266
28
West Lafayette
a lot of unrelated stuff in your post. there is no need for zram or swap (regarding the first posts its swap and not compressed ram, but i do not know myself what it is) if you get an extra 1GB of ram. 1 GB of ram is ALWAYS better than zram or swap. zram is a nice option when you cannot extend the memory for various reasons and swap may be used for heigh memory use cases when you have some not too slow alternate memory. n9 internal memory is still damn slow for swapping (if it is indeed a swap faile on disk at all).

but actually there seems to be no good reason to not add an extra GB as we can see the nexus 6 has it, the nexus 9 ha definetly room for it (it is not like pc dram module) and it is damn cheap also.

secondly, i'm not talking about multitasking when i pointed out 64bit, so why the hell are you bringing this in? beside of that on a tablet multitasking it meanwhile not so uncommen. the point is that a 64 bit os has a MUCH larger memory footprint. also such high screen resolutions add a decent amount of memory either. and finally, your argument about benchmarks proving anything related to my comment is unrelated at best. it doesn't prove anything related to my statement.

there is aboluelty no reason to prefere zram or swap over an extra GB of ram, and it seems that there is nothing that would made it difficult for htc to add it. i can only assume that they added this just collect some experience on it and nothing more.

i really don't get it. what's the purpose of your statement? showing of your lack of knowledge or celebrating fanboyship "oh cool, they skipped a 5$ GB ram but gave us zram hurayyyyy".

sounds totally sound to give a smartphone 1GB ram more, same high resoltion on a smaller screen and twice as much disk space :rolleyes:


EDIT: but please finally tell us WHAT exactly is so "interessting" adding zram or swap instead of one GB ram? you post has no information except this little claim. one might find this decision interesting of course due to its stupidity but it doesn't look that this is the source of your interest.

No...you would understand what he was talking about if you understood what he meant by "architecture". The Tegra K1 chip employed by the N9, aka Project Denver, is the first in order execution CPU since...like, 1990.......This device was never designed to multitask, as the CPU itself was designed to finish tasks in order, and be damn fast at that.
Here, read up on this: http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidias-64bit-Tegra-K1-The-Ghost-of-Transmeta-Rides-Again/
Adding 1GB of RAM is useless, since 64bit really needs 4 & up to shine, it doesn't make a difference whether or not you tack on another GB.....
 

a user

Senior Member
Jan 11, 2011
4,894
2,032
No...you would understand what he was talking about if you understood what he meant by "architecture". The Tegra K1 chip employed by the N9, aka Project Denver, is the first in order execution CPU since...like, 1990.......This device was never designed to multitask, as the CPU itself was designed to finish tasks in order, and be damn fast at that.
Here, read up on this: http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidias-64bit-Tegra-K1-The-Ghost-of-Transmeta-Rides-Again/
i know very well how denver works and it still has nothing to do with what i said.
Adding 1GB of RAM is useless, since 64bit really needs 4 & up to shine, it doesn't make a difference whether or not you tack on another GB.....
that's simply not true! 64bit does not shine more orn 4GB ram or on 12GB. you need 64bit for 4GB+ ram (while 4GB actually works on 32bit with PAE). but i am not talking about when 64bit is needed to allow for more memory. i am talking about the double sized memory pointers, the bigger size ints and longs, due to 64bit! this caused all native code to consume far more memory. but as ia already said multiple times, not only the 64bit os itself eats a lot of memory it also the high resolution graphics but also the meanwhile increased resolution assets of android.

i don't say that it is actually needed to install more memory. but if they decided to add zram it seems they actually needed more memory. the point is that it is stupid to extend the memory with zram instead of just simply adding 1GB ram.

i can't say it more clearly. the stupidity is to NOT INSTALL 1GB MORE RAM BUT INSTEAD USE ZRAM TO MAKE UP FOR LACK OF MEMORY.
 
Last edited:

di11igaf

Inactive Recognized Developer
Sep 6, 2010
1,898
739
East Coast
No...you would understand what he was talking about if you understood what he meant by "architecture". The Tegra K1 chip employed by the N9, aka Project Denver, is the first in order execution CPU since...like, 1990.......This device was never designed to multitask, as the CPU itself was designed to finish tasks in order, and be damn fast at that.
Here, read up on this: http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidias-64bit-Tegra-K1-The-Ghost-of-Transmeta-Rides-Again/
Adding 1GB of RAM is useless, since 64bit really needs 4 & up to shine, it doesn't make a difference whether or not you tack on another GB.....

Arm chips didn't really start to use out of order instructions until the cortex a9, sometime around the Tegra 2 and the atrix. There were plenty, literally hundreds of android phones with cortex a7 and a8 cpu's with in order execution. (Think of the older snapdragons, the hummingbird, the omap's) Because this CPU happens to be an in order processor, doesn't mean its now a non multitasking tablet or OS. Multitasking performance should not be expected to get WORSE, with better hardware(I'm not saying it is, but it shouldn't be expected).
Yes 64 bit processors shine with above 4 gigs of ram(as far as mapping more memory), but 64 bit applications have a larger memory footprint than the same application compiled for 32 bit CPU's(uses more ram). So with the higher resolution and 64 bit OS, 2 gigs of ram may be pushing it, and it is probably why they added the swap.
No matter how you slice it, ram is always better than swap. Ram is always gonna be faster memory than a large storage device. If they thought 2 gigs would not be enough ram, swap should not have even be a consideration, just make it 3. The nexus 10 was a prime example of this due to the screen resolution and the GPU needing too much ram. Most of the 10's issues were the CPU not having quite enough power and not enough ram. Chrome would refresh pages with just a few tabs open when switching between them.
 
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user822

Senior Member
Apr 6, 2013
543
123
I personally would not trust a young filesystem that was initiated by Samsung.
Both of the above sounds like my data is at risk ;)
 

kikikaka

Senior Member
Oct 19, 2007
67
2
Google Pixel 2
Google Pixel 5
After playing with it for a few days , I observed reload of the launcher sometimes. I am not sure if Lollipop is not yet well optimized for N9 or whatever. I think that 3GB of ram should be better.
 

bushgreen

Member
Oct 17, 2014
13
0
2gb Ram is plenty it does not need the swap file
I hope the swap file ain't causing any slow downs or lag because it is reading writing to it instead of using the main ram
 

syntrix

Senior Member
Nov 10, 2008
803
96
Little Rock, AR
The 508 MB Swap partition do not use any RAM, I think it's just an partition on the internal memory to extent the RAM with 508 MB (so basically you have 1.8 Gb RAM + 508 MB Swap)

And see attached screenshot for the AndroBench results.

A swap partition is just that, it swaps memory to a file system when memory or other resources are gone. Some applications will do it by default.

I'm positive you don't have a grasp on linux or *inux systems. You should read up on 'em.
 

GoremanX

Senior Member
Apr 3, 2013
64
6
I beg to differ... I'm so sick and tired of all my apps getting booted out of memory the moment they're off-screen. Even the damn launcher vanishes way too quick and takes an eternity to reload. This tablet sucks for multi taking, even though the gorgeous screen is taylor-made for it.
 

toopy

Member
May 13, 2005
38
3
i know very well how denver works and it still has nothing to do with what i said.

that's simply not true! 64bit does not shine more orn 4GB ram or on 12GB. you need 64bit for 4GB+ ram (while 4GB actually works on 32bit with PAE). but i am not talking about when 64bit is needed to allow for more memory. i am talking about the double sized memory pointers, the bigger size ints and longs, due to 64bit! this caused all native code to consume far more memory. but as ia already said multiple times, not only the 64bit os itself eats a lot of memory it also the high resolution graphics but also the meanwhile increased resolution assets of android.

i don't say that it is actually needed to install more memory. but if they decided to add zram it seems they actually needed more memory. the point is that it is stupid to extend the memory with zram instead of just simply adding 1GB ram.

i can't say it more clearly. the stupidity is to NOT INSTALL 1GB MORE RAM BUT INSTEAD USE ZRAM TO MAKE UP FOR LACK OF MEMORY.


Totally agree with this, I'd be happy to pay $10-$20 more for and extra 1 to 2 Gb or ram.
Then they could have gone something like 4GB Ram + zram
Would have been better
And while denver may be an In order design, its 7 way Superscalar which should outweigh the benifits of a 3 way OoOE Design for multitasking
 
Last edited:

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    no, it is not an interesting alternative, it is a stupid one in every way. the nexus 9 is already quite expensive. 1GB ram just costs a couple of dollars and room is more than enough within. and considering it is 64Bit it will bloat up ram usage anyway, not to forget that this high screen resolution eats up a lot of ram, too.

    It's stupid until you realize how channeling works. The option to user zram is a very interesting one and it might be a better solution. So far benchmarks of the tablet agree with HTC/Google.

    EDIT: also, in a serialized "queue" architecture like the this 64bit K1 with 2 cores, multitasking is not the priority. 2GB + zRam or 3GB should not make much difference.
    Google opted for this kind of CPU in the N9 to make it as fast as an ipad air2 on your active task. You don't have multiple windows, you won't do true multitasking in this tablet. This is an ipad alternative, and even these architectural details show it.
    6
    Any conjecture or theoretical analysis is ultimately pretty meaningless. Just let the performance speak for itself.
    5
    a lot of unrelated stuff in your post. there is no need for zram or swap (regarding the first posts its swap and not compressed ram, but i do not know myself what it is) if you get an extra 1GB of ram. 1 GB of ram is ALWAYS better than zram or swap. zram is a nice option when you cannot extend the memory for various reasons and swap may be used for heigh memory use cases when you have some not too slow alternate memory. n9 internal memory is still damn slow for swapping (if it is indeed a swap faile on disk at all).

    but actually there seems to be no good reason to not add an extra GB as we can see the nexus 6 has it, the nexus 9 ha definetly room for it (it is not like pc dram module) and it is damn cheap also.

    secondly, i'm not talking about multitasking when i pointed out 64bit, so why the hell are you bringing this in? beside of that on a tablet multitasking it meanwhile not so uncommen. the point is that a 64 bit os has a MUCH larger memory footprint. also such high screen resolutions add a decent amount of memory either. and finally, your argument about benchmarks proving anything related to my comment is unrelated at best. it doesn't prove anything related to my statement.

    there is aboluelty no reason to prefere zram or swap over an extra GB of ram, and it seems that there is nothing that would made it difficult for htc to add it. i can only assume that they added this just collect some experience on it and nothing more.

    i really don't get it. what's the purpose of your statement? showing of your lack of knowledge or celebrating fanboyship "oh cool, they skipped a 5$ GB ram but gave us zram hurayyyyy".

    sounds totally sound to give a smartphone 1GB ram more, same high resoltion on a smaller screen and twice as much disk space :rolleyes:


    EDIT: but please finally tell us WHAT exactly is so "interessting" adding zram or swap instead of one GB ram? you post has no information except this little claim. one might find this decision interesting of course due to its stupidity but it doesn't look that this is the source of your interest.

    No...you would understand what he was talking about if you understood what he meant by "architecture". The Tegra K1 chip employed by the N9, aka Project Denver, is the first in order execution CPU since...like, 1990.......This device was never designed to multitask, as the CPU itself was designed to finish tasks in order, and be damn fast at that.
    Here, read up on this: http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidias-64bit-Tegra-K1-The-Ghost-of-Transmeta-Rides-Again/
    Adding 1GB of RAM is useless, since 64bit really needs 4 & up to shine, it doesn't make a difference whether or not you tack on another GB.....
    3
    The Nexus 9 uses the F2FS (flash-friendly) filesystem as default, instead of EXT4! (see attached screenshot)

    Also notice the 508 MB Swap partition in the screenshot...
    3
    Can you do a androbench benchmark please i want to know the storage performance

    ---------- Post added at 06:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:48 PM ----------



    What is the swap file used for, is it for the cpu, does it use the ram?

    The thing has the fastest set up it should be the most smoothest device ever made.

    64 bit tegra k1 with geekbench single core performance of 2000 almost double that snapdragon 801.
    Fastest internal storage chip. 15MB random write and 38MB random read.
    Android lollipop
    F2fs filesystem
    2gb ram

    ---------- Post added at 06:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:03 PM ----------

    .

    ..

    The 508 MB Swap partition do not use any RAM, I think it's just an partition on the internal memory to extent the RAM with 508 MB (so basically you have 1.8 Gb RAM + 508 MB Swap)

    And see attached screenshot for the AndroBench results.