I’d be in trouble, since between ZFS and my various VMs, my system idles at ~170 GB RAM used. With only 32 I’d have to shut basically everything down.
My previous system had 64 GB, and while it wasn’t great, I got by. Then one of the motherboard slots died and dropped me to 48 GB, which seriously hurt. That’s when I decided to rebuild and went to 256.
Real question. Doesn’t the computer actually slow down when you have that much memory? Doesn’t the CPU need to seek into a bigger vast vs a smaller memory set?
That’s a complicated question. Bigger memory can split it between more banks, which can mean more precharge penalties if the memory you need to access is spread out between them.
But big memory systems generally use workstation or server processors, which means more memory channels, which means the system can access multiple regions of memory simultaneously. Mini-PCs and laptops generally only have one memory controller, higher end laptops and desktops usually have two, workstations often have 4, and big servers can have 8+. That’s huge for parallel workflows and virtualization.
I’d be in trouble, since between ZFS and my various VMs, my system idles at ~170 GB RAM used. With only 32 I’d have to shut basically everything down.
My previous system had 64 GB, and while it wasn’t great, I got by. Then one of the motherboard slots died and dropped me to 48 GB, which seriously hurt. That’s when I decided to rebuild and went to 256.
Real question. Doesn’t the computer actually slow down when you have that much memory? Doesn’t the CPU need to seek into a bigger vast vs a smaller memory set?
Or is this an old school way of thinking?
That’s a complicated question. Bigger memory can split it between more banks, which can mean more precharge penalties if the memory you need to access is spread out between them.
But big memory systems generally use workstation or server processors, which means more memory channels, which means the system can access multiple regions of memory simultaneously. Mini-PCs and laptops generally only have one memory controller, higher end laptops and desktops usually have two, workstations often have 4, and big servers can have 8+. That’s huge for parallel workflows and virtualization.