[K12OSN] Client RAM question

[Julius Szelagiewicz]

On Mon, 29 Mar 2004, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-03-29 at 09:27, Julius Szelagiewicz wrote:
>
> > 	There was not mention of 4 processor systems, because they seem to
> > be not cost effective when the limiting factor is memory, not processing
> > power.
>
> A different and much more expensive xeon processor is used when you have
> more than 2 processors.  IBM does something to work around that with 4
> processors but that box is still too expensive.
>
> > 	I have very high hopes for an Opteron based system - a dual Xeon
> > 2.4GHz with 4GB runs ok (30% - 50% use) with 34 users, so I think that a
> > dual Opteron could get me to 80+ happy users with 12 or 16 GB.
>
> Dual xeons should work fine with >4Gigs RAM if you use the bigmem kernel
> and a lot of motherboards will take 6 or 8 dimms.  The motherboards
> were spec'd at 2Gigs per strip although the 2Gig versions have not
> been available very long and are still more expensive than the 1's.
> So, you should be able to take some of the existing xeon boxes to
> 12 or 16 GB if you wanted.   If you are buying new, the opterons would
> probably be a better choice, though.
>
Les,
	my actual experience with bigmem kernels was very, very sobering.
The systems run slowly and erratically at best and were crashing at worst.
When i try to remember the tricks i was employing in the far away years of
the previous century to get my little Datapoint to access more than 64K
memory, i can see why it is a good idea to just have the wider data path
julius