Implications of large memory systems

[Wm. E. Davidsen Jr]

In article <28819 at bu-cs.BU.EDU> bzs at bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes:

| 5. Fujitsu claims they will be producing 64Mbit memory chips in a
| couple of years. This means a 16Mbyte workstation, with the same chip
| count, becomes a 1GB workstation. Does anything need to be evolved to
| utilize this kind of change? Is it really sufficient to treat it as
| "more of the same"?

  Programs tend to fall into two categories, those needing more memory
than you have, and those which run easily in existing memory.

  AI, modeling, certain database programs, lots of things which could
use a GB (or any other finite memory) might make use of 1GB memory.
Editors, spreadsheets, communications, industrial control, graphics,
compilation, CAD/CAM, are things which usually don't push the limit of
current memory.

  Looking at accounting on some local workstations shows very few
program which need more than 2MB of memory (even GNU emacs). If we are
going to make good use of all that memory we will either need processors
fast enough to drive many programs, or something better to do with all
that memory. Of course I could mention that most people don't really
*need* that much memory, and wouldn't use it at all, much less
productively.

  Now that you're convinced that *you* need more memory, run vmstat for
a day, using something like "vmstat 60 600 > /tmp/stat.log &" to get a
reading every minute. Look at the free memory. If the machine is a
workstation rather than being used for timesharing (many schools try to
put 32 users on an 8MB Sun), the total memory in use is probably 4-12MB.
Do most users need that in a workstation? I don't, as long as I have
access to a large machine for those rare problems which can use that
much memory.

  If a workstation is really going to have 1GB memory something better
than "more of same" is going to be needed to justify the cost.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu at crd.GE.COM)
  {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me