Re: using more than 2 GB as a ram disk
Cameron Simpson (cs@zip.com.au)
Tue, 2 Feb 1999 00:02:56 +0000
On 1 Feb 1999, in message <Pine.LNX.3.95.990201103009.10133A-100000@penguin.transmeta.com>
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com> wrote:
| > - the kernel (i.e. the buffer cache, paging unit, swapper, etc.) will not
| > support more than 2 GB physical memory on 32 bit machines.
| Basically yes.
| > - you would accept patches that make it possible to use the remaining memory
| > as as raw physical memory.
| Correct.
| The only people concerned about 2M+ on PC kind of machines tend to be
| database people, and they are more than happy to just get it as "extra
| memory" rather than having it around as generic buffers for the page cache
| etc.
ASIC people too, and they really do want it as generic buffers.
Here (my workplace, not zip) we're readily getting into ASIC simulation work
which wants buckets of memory. Intel boxes are cheap CPU and if/when our
design tools get ported to Linux we would probably be very happy to have
2G+ of RAM.
Of course, that only gets us to 4G. It may be that when we get well
over 2G we'll want to step straight to a 64bit platform (like the
Ultras we're running now anyway).
--
Cameron Simpson, DoD#743 cs@zip.com.au http://www.zip.com.au/~cs/
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