Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

64GB RAM Under 64-bit Linux?

Posted by Cliff on from the now-that's-a-lotta-bits dept.

gary.flake asks: "My group at NECI is in need of a machine that can address 64GB of ram in a single process. This means we need 64-bit addressing. We'd prefer to go with a Linux solution because all of our development is under Linux. We've spec'ed out some reasonable machines (Dell can do 32GB, and Compaq can do 64GB) but they seem to be lacking in that they can only be loaded up with 4 x 800Mhz Itaniums. We would really like to have more processing power (2 Ghz x 4 would be a dream). Does anyone know of any monster Itanium machines that will meet our needs? (Please, no Alphas). Finding such a beast is harder than you'd think."

3 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. You're silly, or in a STRANGE NIICHE'. by AtariDatacenter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So I'll say what nobody has said until this point. (If you find this in Metamod, and it is marked 'redundant', please SPANK the moderator for me.)

    Either you've got something REALLY REALLY strange going on, or you've got an incredibly strange niche' you are programming in. Your best bet is to spend a few brain cycles and figure out a way to do it WITHOUT 64gb of RAM.

    However, if you're hell-bent on getting some CPUs that run Linux, and your budget is unlimited, go for a Sun Ultra Enterprise 10000. Other downside? You'll need a minimum of 16 CPUs to go with that 64 GB of ram (unless Sun released higher density ram chips that were certified for the E10k while I wasn't looking, in which case, you'll only need 8 CPUs). Expect to pay $1-2M.

    And then if Linux has been ported to the UltraSparc III processor, you might be able to get away with something smaller. But the Sun V880 will only go 8 CPUs at 32GB. You'll need at least a Sun Fire 3800 to do the job of 64GB. Probably will take 4 processors to make the 64gb available.

    The biggest memory being put out for PCs right now are 1gb modules (that I've seen). I don't think you're going to find a motherboard with room for 64 memory modules. Or even 32.

    Time to rethink what you are doing, or throw lots of money at it. That money, though, would probably be better spent at buying the brainpower to rethink it.

    Sorry.

    1. Re:You're silly, or in a STRANGE NIICHE'. by AtariDatacenter · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The probably *can* afford the machine, and it's probably going to be cheaper to throw hardware at the problem that it will be to hack at the problem to make it computable in awkward hardware.

      Probably a dangerous response to give on Slashdot, but if they've got money to burn, typically speaking, they're not going to be as Linuxcentric as the submitter seems to say they are.

      The posting would have gone more like, "We're about to spend $1M on hardware to do this. But if you can tell me some hardware we can do this with on Linux for the cheap, I can convince them!"

  2. What do you want from the guy? by mushon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If somebody would have bothered to check, the man is a Research Scientist Computer Science (lookup Gary Flake) in the NEC research instiute, with only 70 more researchers with him in the whole place, and let me guess that he has a lot of money to spend...

    Give him a little credit, that what he is doing is probably worth the time and effort he is putting in to it, and be thankfull that you are here to hear about such a project (if he'll only tell us what it's about ...)