Hi

What do modern OS do with memory. Was just cleaning up my girlfriends Samsung tablet. Its using 1.5gb out 2 just to boot to the os. What is it doing with all the memory ?

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@g01df1sh

Services. Some programs pre-load portions on startup (naughty in most cases and often done by the pre-installed bloatware). Also, the more memory you have to manage, the more real memory is used by the mapping. Also, registry.

@g01df1sh

It's probably not really using (in the Amiga sense of the word) anywhere near that amount of memory. Asking a Linux system how much memory it's using is a bit like asking a bank how much money they have, it all depends on who's asking and when / how they're going to use it. Look at 'cat /proc/meminfo | grep MemAvailable' instead (not 'cat /proc/meminfo' | MemFree')', that will give you something that's closer to the truth (it's still just a very rough guestimate though).

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I'd say also caching/preloading of files and common libraries.

Also, modern OS have lots and lots of things running in background that elder ones do not have

Maybe when ultrafast NVME will be the common reality there will be less preloading,who knows

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@g01df1sh

Modern software recognise that memory is 1000x faster than the hard drive, so sophisticated software will take advantage of it Eg load file system in memory for fast access. Or load DOM in memory for quick browsing the web.
The theory is what’s the point in having super fast memory if you are not using most of it.
These days memory is cheap and in 2020 the standard is set to 32 GB.

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@sTix

Good suggestion, but 'free' produces almost the same result, and is easier to type.

bison@home ~ $ free; cat /proc/meminfo | grep MemAvailable
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:       32802380     1287492    29180800      109936     2334088    30959836
Swap:      33416192           0    33416192
MemAvailable:   30959324 kB

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@bison

Back in the 90s people would have fainted if someone would say that almost 2G is a minor difference :)

But I agree, on your system the difference is surprisingly small. You need to run more cruft and leave the machine on for half a year ;). I'm willing to bet a euro or two (not more) that the relative difference on g01df1sh's tablet is bigger though.

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@bison

LOL, I just realized that your 'same results' comment wasn't about memory use at all. Silly me, nevermind my comment above. I just like cat:ing things :)

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Quote:

asymetrix wrote: These days memory is cheap and in 2020 the standard is set to 32 GB.

There is a memory size standard and it is 32GiB? Is that how much memory the average user needs to use a web browser now days?

Computers can be so cheap that for the cost of every 8GiB of memory a usable computer can be purchased. Does that make memory cheap or the cost of bloat expensive?

Last edited by matthey on 08-Sep-2020 at 11:10 PM.

@matthey

Sorry folks but 32Gb is not the standard. If you are a gamer maybe, but not the standard by a long shot. (I AM a Gamer and play very heavy flight sims that eat up memory and I still only have 16 GB so 32 is a ridiculous statement, sorry) Most machines are still being shipped with 8 although 16GB IS starting to become more mainstream so I MIGHT agree hesitantly that MAYBE 16 GB but 32, not a chance.

And you can run a browser on 4GB if you want to but I don't recommend it.
Most folks today can still get along perfectly with 8GB so let's not exaggerate things eh?

My main PC has 32GB of ram and 16GB on the video card. I run 2 screens.
2 screens comes in handy running my Wii U emulator since I can be fullscreen on one screen and have the Gamepad screen on the other which emulates touch functionality with the mouse.

My main screen is a 43" 4k TV but I mostly run that at 1440p. Second screen is an older 24" 1080p monitor.

What I really need to do is clean out my office so I can have the space to run VR...

@outlawal2

My cheap notebook had 4 GB when purchased nearly 4 years ago. Two steps really improved its performance: 1) forced reinstall of Win10 (thanks Microsoft... at least pre-installed bloatware is gone) and 2) updating RAM to 8 GB. With my limited needs (basic webbrowsing, office, Amiga emulation and older games), this configuration is fully sufficient. Maybe replacing HDD with SSD could be another step, but I will probably rather buy a new computer (with more RAM installed by default), than invest in the old one. However, I´m quite sure any ram above 8 GB would be used only by video games.

Quote:

pavlor wrote: Maybe replacing HDD with SSD could be another step, but I will probably rather buy a new computer (with more RAM installed by default), than invest in the old one.

I have bought used memory DIMMs for older PC computers which can be quite reasonable in cost. I have configured several old computers for multi-channel use which gives a nice performance boost in addition to the boost from increasing memory in a OS using virtual memory and demand paging. The AmigaOS is no faster with additional memory until nearly all is used causing a flush while Windows is preloading and then slow paging on demand no matter how much memory there is.

An SSD usually uses flash memory. There has been some talk about access times in this thread.

SRAM L1 cache 1-2ns
SRAM L2 cache 3-20ns
SDRAM mem 50-100ns
flash mem 25,000-50,000ns
disk mem 5,000,000-10,000,000ns

An SSD can make quite a difference with demand paging. Virtual memory is usually not used on a RTOS which the Amiga is closer to because of the unacceptable pauses during normal program execution.

Quote:

However, I´m quite sure any ram above 8 GB would be used only by video games.

Extra memory is nice for multi-tasking too but 8GiB is enough for most casual users.

Last edited by kolla on 09-Sep-2020 at 11:28 PM.

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B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

Just a few observations...

If I have Steam launched on a idling 2GB Win10 machine, it will run out of memory in a few days.

+ 2GB enable running one app (like chrome) at a time. The bloat is insane.

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