Here's hoping for 2GB ram not 1GB....

[WizardStan]

Newer Windows have taken a chapter out of Linux's book and is a lot more memory usage optimized: it will use a lot more memory than it actually needs for cacheing and such, so if it is "using" 14GB it probably actually only needs... I don't even want to guess, that's way more memory than I've ever dealt with directly, but I can pretty much guarantee that it is way way less.

Memory usage is actually really really tricky. I have 8GB of RAM and 4GB swap: if I open a few hundred tabs in Firefox it will consume almost 100% of my total RAM, 12GB. If I turn the swap off and do the same thing, opening the same hundreds of tabs, it will still consume almost 100% of my total RAM, only 8GB this time. I'm pretty confident that if it only had 4GB to work with it would still happily open those hundreds of tabs and consume almost 100% of my total RAM (less confident below that, there's a breaking point somewhere).

So figuring out how much RAM is actually a good amount isn't as straightforward as figuring out what you can do on your desktop with many GB of RAM. If you want to do a more accurate comparison, actually pull out or somehow disable some of your RAM so that it actually only has 2GB to play with, see what you can do with that.

 

[Pickle]

We'll probably start with the 2GB RAM and it seems we could go up to 8GB with our current setup.

Would we be limited to 4 GB with 32 bit or does ARM have a work around (or are you thinking of going 64 bit?)

Large Physical Address Extension

I thought Intel only had that support?

 

[codifies]

We'll probably start with the 2GB RAM and it seems we could go up to 8GB with our current setup.

 
Would we be limited to 4 GB with 32 bit or does ARM have a work around (or are you thinking of going 64 bit?)

Large Physical Address Extension

 
I thought Intel only had that support?

http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.ddi0438d/CHDCGIBF.html

 

[WizardStan]

I thought Intel only had that support?

Me too, but a very brief search suggests that it was added with ARM-v7 and specifically implemented in Cortex-A15 (ie, the OMAP5432)So yay, I guess.

edit: h34r:

 

[FBnil]

if I open a few hundred tabs in Firefox it will consume almost 100%

@WizardStan: I use the cache-status FF plugin to check RAM and disk usage, reported by FF itself. Could be handy

 

[comradekingu]

More ram uses a bit more power too, but ill take it any day. More speed now by preloading things, and less of a bottleneck down the road.

 

[rygD]

I have stated in the past that I would prefer more than the expected 2GB of RAM in the Pyra, but I don't think only 2GB will cause any major issues.  Lately I have been surprised by how well things work with my CC Pandora with swap.  Last week I had a browser (I think it was Otter) with a few tabs, a text document with a bunch of screenshots I was taking, wireshark, and a couple other things I wasn't actively using, and I had no unbearable slow downs.

I am surprised no one has mentioned the videos ED, TrashyMG, and maybe others, made.  Perhaps codifies can make specific requests and someone can make a video showing how the devboard handles it with just 2GB.

 

[Askarus]

Just thought I'd check my memory usage right now, don't have much open (often there will also be Unity + Maya + Mudbox open) but right now I'm at 14.4 GB.


I'm not saying the Pyra needs anywhere need that much, but on every Windows computer I have ever owned, having 'too much' RAM has never been an issue. My current box has 32 GB in, and I'm often using over 16 GB (but less than 32 GB) so I seem to have about the right amount for my current usage.

Edit: in the above you can see: computer browser windows, chrome, skype, notepad++, command terminal, Tortoise HG, emClient (email), Visual Studio 2012, Photoshop, Eclipse, Calculator, Postbox (email archive), task manager and mspaint (the last two for making this screenshot). 

When I used windows 7 I had 2 Gig of my 4 reserved for ????.

It was reserved for the system.

Now Linux uses about 300MB.

I think I finally know why it's called Random Access Memory.

Because Windows randomly accesses it (and fills it up).

 

[slaeshjag]

So does Linux. Having RAM and not using it is wasteful, so any reasonable OS will cache as much as possible into available RAM. The caches are volatile and are free'd when more RAM is needed.

 

[fusion_power]

How fast is the Pyra RAM actualy connected? Any "bottle necks" we should be aware of?

 

[Kev2442]

That's an interesting topic...

I don't quite see the point of having more than 2, even if I'm using about 1Gb with Firefox alone.

Maybe 4 if the price is fair, but 8 is overkill. At least with our current CPU. When we'll have higher-end PC games emulation, like Civ4 or NFSU2, then that would come of use. Or wouldn't.

I don't see the point for a ramdisk, as we already have Flash memory. I think access times are close enough for most uses (I use one to store FLAC music).

"Segmentation" - a scheme to ensure that those who can afford to pay more -do-.

Maybe charge $75 more for the 4 and $150 more for the 8?  Even though it wouldn't matter a bit to >95% of the usage cases, some people are willing to pay more even for the perception of 'more power'.

It would make the purchase sheet a bit more complicated... more like buying a car.

Pyra Option sheet (wild ass guesses on prices)

Optional Aluminum case +$100

Optional 3G + GPS Europe +$75

Optional 4G + GPS Eurpoe +150

Optional 3G + GPS US AT&T or T-mobile +$100

Optional 4G + GPS US AT&T +$175

Optional 3G + GPS US Sprint or Verizon or US Cellular +$100

Optional 4G + GPS US Sprint or Verizon or US Cellular +$175

Optional 4GB RAM +$75

Optional 8GB RAM +$150

Optional 128GB Lexar microSD with OS preloaded $150

Optional pre-installed screen protector +$25

Optional aluminum stylus +$15

Optional 256GB SDXC card with entire PND Manager collection pre-loaded AND text contents of Wikipedia cached, unit painted purple outer case parts with lime green keyboard and screen bezels and a DragonBox Pyra embroidered towel (Hickhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Version) + $300

The list could go on and on...

While I disagree (I'd be interested in buying extra RAM, but only if it's cheap enough, and I don't want of Apple's pricing for big spender sheeps to ruin the Pyra concept), I can totally see an H2G2 edition. Don't panic ED.

 

[ibisum]

Why I want more RAM: compiling onboard.

Ah but then again we will have a FlashRAM socket, no?  Well, swapon then I suppose (its fast isn't it, that socket?)

 

[_jr_]

I don't know what you are compiling, but I didn't have any problems compiling gcc itself on a 512MB Pandora. It doesn't even seem to need much of my swap files.

 

[WizardStan]

As with a lot of things these days, compiling follows a "more you have, the better" philosophy. If you have a lot it will do more with it. If you don't have as much it will still get the job done it will just take longer. I have never not been able to compile something on my BeagleBoard which only has 256MB of RAM, but it's definitely faster on my Pandora, even my CC clocked at the same as the BeagleBoard. The extra RAM helps but not having it isn't a failure.

And I think that's basically going to be the mantra: 2GB is enough, but it doesn't hurt to have more (caveat of it does technically hurt power and pocketbook)

 

[bzar]

_jr_, take a big C++ project and try that. I've actually gotten a compilation to abort because it ran out of memory on my rebirth pandora. Nothing a swap on external HDD won't fix, but proves the point.

 

[TrashyMG]

^ Poor coding.

 

[ekianjo]

I don't know what you are compiling, but I didn't have any problems compiling gcc itself on a 512MB Pandora. It doesn't even seem to need much of my swap files.

Try LibreOffice

 

[Silent-Hunter]

LibreOffice takes about 2 hours to compile on my MSI gaming laptop with 8 cores and 12 GB of RAM. I can't even imagine how long it would take on even a 1 GHz Pandora.

 

[bzar]

^ Poor coding.

Please elaborate. Yes, if you only do simple things things will stay simple. Sometimes the simple things simply don't do and a program requires complexity due to the inherent complexity of the issue. I'm quite sure "poor coding" is not at least the only reason.
Or did you mean poor coding in the compiler? G++ is quite memory happy, clang being quite a bit better here.

 

[TrashyMG]

Please elaborate.

 I was being a smart ass...