Hello,
On Tue, 24 Nov 2015 22:49:06 +0100 Paul Boddie paul@boddie.org.uk wrote:
On Tuesday 24. November 2015 19.36.14 Paul Sokolovsky wrote:
Just as x86-32, ARMv7 has physical address extension http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.ddi0438i/CHDCGI BF.html , so it can address more than 4Gb of physical memory. That still leaves 4Gb of virtual memory per process, and thanks god - bloating memory size doesn't mean growing its speed, so the more memory, the slower it all works.
4GB or 4Gb? I guess you mean the former.
Yep, 4GiB, can't live up to 21st century standards, yuck.
Again, I haven't kept up with this, so it's useful to know. I remember that the i386 architecture had support for larger address spaces, but I guess that it was more convenient to move towards the amd64 variant in the end.
The way it was pushed on everyone, yeah. And we'll see if the same is happening now with arm64 - just as you, I skipped x86_64 "revolution", so can't judge for sure, but as far as I can tell, yeah, it's being pushed pretty much. Which is only said for projects like EOMA68, because it's endless run, and all the careful selection of nice 32-bit SoCs risk going down /dev/null, being consumers soon will meet classic stuff with "wwwwhat? it's not 64-bit?"
Generally, it's pretty depressing to read this memory FUD on mailing list of "sustainable computing" project. What mere people would need more memory for? Watching movies? Almost nobody puts more than 1Gb because *it's not really needed*. And for sh%tty software, no matter if you have 1, 2, or 8GB - it will devour it and sh%t it all around, making the system overall work slower and slower with more memory. (I'm currently sitting on 16Gb box with constant 100% cpu load - it's Firefox collecting garbage in its 6Gb javascript heap - forever and ever).
FUD? Ouch! Thanks for classifying some pretty innocent remarks in such a negative way.
Perhaps it was a bit strong, but we all know that EOMA68 project is rather overdue, and it feels that maybe - just maybe - something will materialize finally anytime soon. And maybe - just maybe - coming up with high-end 2Gb module is good idea to show that project can deliver "bleeding edge" spec, not perceivably lag behind the market midline. But marketing it with "RAM is (or will soon be) the inhibiting factor around the adoption of single- board computers." is IMHO will only hurt the project, as its main goal (unless my memory plays tricks on me) is to deliver commodity hardware in the hands of people to do real-world things (and allow to sustainably reuse that hardware for doing even more real-world things).
So, one of scenario how it all may come up is that all this sustainability talk may be a marketing gimmick and there won't be much more sustainability in EOMA than freedom in some fairphone. It will be a toy for particular kind of hipsters, delivered to them in denim recycled bags. Luke gets rich and will drive a sustainable personally tuned Tesla, but not that rich to produce an open-hardware SoC. All that would be pretty sad finale after all these years.
So, I hope the project will continue to educate how cool it's to run a home router with server capabilities with 256MB RAM instead of typical 32MB, even if it costs 3x (for starters, hope it gets more sustainable over time), rather than ship luxuries and proclaiming demise of 1GB single-board computers.
Thanks for other comments - insightful.
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Some progress is actually worth having, you know.
Paul