Where are the Large RAM Systems?

CaptCanuk asks: "I've been charged with finding a system with 16 GB of memory and have had a really hard time in acquiring one (especially with a PCIE 16x slot). Linux is at the forefront of these 'large system memory' systems and beyond beta versions of Windows XP, is the only OS that supports the 64 bit memory addressing required to use this much RAM. When I asked large beige box wholesalers, I'd get comments from 'Why do you want a 16GB harddrive...you want MEMORY? are you sure?' to 'No motherboard supports more than 4GB of memory; everyone knows that'. Where are these mythical large memory systems? Do you think such workstation configurations will become pervasive in the future? Will it take Microsoft's Windows XP 64 bit to legitimize their existence in larger quantities?"

Comments

Big Memory Systems

[Gary Destruction]

If I remember right, I saw an option in the 2.4.x kernel that had the option for large memory support. The choices were either 4GB or 64GB. But come to think of it, I'm not sure if that's for RAM or memory addressing.

Re:Big Memory Systems

[dukerobinson]

well.... it's for addressing memory in the ram

Re:Big Memory Systems

[brejc8]

That is the addressable memory space. Curiousley the x84 instruction set doesn't have a 32bit (4Gb) wall but reather an 64Gb wall due to the segment offset. This is the original hack which gave us 1Mb limit reather than the 64K.
The only reason linux gives you the choice between the two when compiling is to allow the address to be stores in one 32bit int.

Re:Big Memory Systems

[dont_think_twice]

You wasted a first post on that nonsense? You might as well have trolled.

Re:Big Memory Systems

[Anonymous Coward]

Most CPUs starting from PentiumPro had 36-bit physical addressing, and as long as the mainboard and chipset supported it too, CPU could address up to 64GB of PHYSICAL memory. For this however, paging must be switched to the PAE mode, so page table entries will have another format and could contain bigger physical address base, that's what the "64G" Support in Linux' kernel was for. It has nothing to do with memory segments, or the ability of 8086 to address 1MB using 16-bit pointers at all.

On 32-bit CPUs, VIRTUAL addresses and segment sizes are still 32-bit and could not exceed the 4G size.

Re:Big Memory Systems

[Anonymous Coward]

Motherfucker, you're illiterate.

Re:Big Memory Systems

[Anonymous Coward]

i was under the impression that processes still had the 32-bit barrier, limiting each process' memory size to 2GB - rendering PAE somewhat useless unless you're doing something that runs in parallel (which you could just do on multiple boxes).

Re:Big Memory Systems

[TeknoHog]

X86 has not always supported 36-bit addressable memory. I think it was introduced with Pentium Pro, while 386 to Pentium MMX supported 4 GB only.

Even so, PPro+ cannot access all of the 64 GB as a single flat memory space, only 4 GB at a time. I forget the exact reasons for this, so perhaps someone can clarify.

Re:Big Memory Systems

[pclminion]

Wow, you call that a hack? What other features-by-design do you consider "hacks?"

The segmentation mechanism was designed to allow the use of more memory while retaining compatibility with 16-bit, segment-naive code. It may not be beautiful but I can't think of a better way they could have implemented it.

The term "hack" is generally reserved for describing an inelegant implementation. In this case, it is the PROBLEM itself which is inelegant, not the solution to it. Segmentation was simple, easily understood, and it solved the problem.

Re:Big Memory Systems

[Bin_jammin]

And you've commanded a mastery of english...

Re:Big Memory Systems

[shaitand]

In order to preserve 16bit compatibility a dirty hack that was segmentation was required, that it was the best hack for the job makes it no less of a hack for a memory addressing scheme. The elegent solution would have been to use the best addressing scheme possible moving forward rather than preserving backward compatibility.

Re:Big Memory Systems

[pclminion]

In order to preserve 16bit compatibility a dirty hack that was segmentation was required, that it was the best hack for the job makes it no less of a hack for a memory addressing scheme.

No. The idea of preserving compatibility with 16 bits apps was the hack, not the particular way they went about it. As you just said yourself, the elegant solution would be to ditch the idea of backward compatibility. Don't blame the solution when it's the problem that sucks.

Many processor architectures throughout computing history have used addressing modes. They are by no means "hacks."

Re:Big Memory Systems

[Anonymous Coward]

While you're talking about apps, specifically, yes PAE and segmentation for the 4GB limit was a dirty stinking hack.

Look at x86-64. Completely backward compatible with 32-bit apps, while also allowing the OS and 64-bit apps to directly address large amounts of memory.

That is how it's done.

Re:Big Memory Systems

[pclminion]

Ahh. I agree that PAE was a hideous piece of garbage. But I was referring specifically to the original segmentation in 8086 and above, which IMHO wasn't that bad and actually opened up a lot of options for the programmer.

I wouldn't have objected to having a segmented 16-bit addressing mode even if the chip had had a true 32-bit address mode. Maybe I'm crazy but I liked it.

Re:Big Memory Systems

[merlin_jim]

Curiousley the x84 instruction

That's x86

set doesn't have a 32bit (4Gb) wall but reather an 64Gb wall due to the segment offset. This is the original hack which gave us 1Mb limit reather than the 64K.

Incorrect; 386 protected mode (which is required to run 32bit) did away with the segment offset and replaced it with 32-bit pointers to memory space. As you said, the original hack gave us a 1 MB limit. In order for Windows to access anything higher than that, you have to have a different addressing mode than was used back then.

Now there ARE ways to address larger than 32-bit memory spaces on the wintel platform; and they DO resemble the original hack to which you refer, but they are NOT the same.

Re:Big Memory Systems

[Gary Destruction]

It took you long enough to mod this down.

Re:Big Memory Systems

[Anonymous Coward]

It took you long enough to mod this down.

Heh, I guess most mods saw the words "large memory" and thought, "Ohhhh... this must be a relevant post!" Heck, I just got metamoderated as unfair for my efforts :)

Cordially,
Your friendly moderator

I'm a bit confused...

[tibike77]

... you want a 16 Gig RAM box and you expect to find it "in the offer" of some company ? Do you want to use it as a desktop or a server ? Why DO you need 16G RAM in a desktop ? Why do you expect to find a "server" at normal retailers ?

That being said, what stops you from buying the components YOU know exist that *can* support such a large memory and build the damn PC YOURSELF ?

Re:I'm a bit confused...

[Atrax]

Because if you're a company looking for reliability and ongoing maintenance, a self-build isn't necessarily the first thing you think of. You're a beancounter looking for an ongoing support contract from a reputable OEM you've heard of before, possibly with onsite or couriered-in replacement clause.

I'd like to throw out the possibility of clustering instead, though (mostly cause it's on my mind because I've been dealing with several support cases on clusters recently). Why is this not an option for extra power, resilience, etc..

Re:I'm a bit confused...

[Zapman]

Whether to use a cluster or not depends heavily on the problem domain. Until very recently, clusters didn't work so well with large databases, etc.

You also seem to be shopping specs rather than throughput. Your mention of 16x PCIexpress is what gives this away. The only cards that support this now are high, high end graphics cards, and these cards don't even need it. There's no real difference between the AGP 8x and PCIex versions of these cards.

That said, you're not going to find what you're looking for in the beige box world. You're looking (realistically) at about 4 different venders: Windows: Dell, IBM, and HP. UNIX: IBM, HP, and Sun.

You're also only looking at servers (not desktop or towers).

My experience is with Sun, and a little Dell and IBM. So I'm going to speak to those. Sun makes magnificient hardware. Their support organization has had problems recently, but the hardware is good enough that we don't need it often. Sun's V880 servers are amazing. up to 8 CPU's and up to 32 gigs of ram, with great growth potential (12 PCI slots, several of them 64 bit, 66 MHz).

We've had lots of problems with our Dell hradware. Whole lines of their servers have been crap, and dell replaced thier 16xx line with their 17xx line for us for free. Our exchange server runs on a 6550 IIRC, which has at least 8 gigs of ram. This model probably can go higher in ram, but I'm not sure.

We've been really impressed with the IBM hardware we've started to purchase. It's been pretty stable, fun to work with, etc. IBM has a long history of making great servers. They probably have several models that will help.

Re:I'm a bit confused...

[Atrax]

We've had lots of problems with our Dell hradware.

As you mention that, we've had a whole string of HDD failures at work on our new Precision Workstations - not Dell directly of course - they just put the things together, but it's emblematic. Having said that, my two Dell notebooks have been pretty solid so far, aside from a(nother) broken HDD which was likely caused by rough handling. It was a good excuse for extra capacity anyway.

If you're in the Exchange area, you're actually limited to 64Gb even though available hardware can go to 128Gb+ - Windows 2003 Enterprise x64 is trapped at 64Gb at present. Not sure if the forthcoming HPC edition or the R2 release will go further. Not even sure if Exchange 2k3 can harness that amount of RAM (not my area).

IBM servers have been great in my experience so far, I must say. I've also been an admin for some old HP Servers which have been running fairly reliably since NT4 was in short pants (one node of the RAID 4 failed about two years back, that's about it even though we had to get a bunch of spares to keep in reserve after that). The only other screwups have been software-based.

Re:I'm a bit confused...

[kabocox]

Dell, IBM, and HP aren't reputable enough companies for you? For products that we pay for the extra support, I've never had an issue with Dell or HP support. (O.k. I usually have to speak with Indians now and again with HP, but that's not a big issue for me.) I want to know what companies your business consider's reputable enough.

Re:I'm a bit confused...

[DetrimentalFiend]

Exactly....

Anyway, http://www.aberdeeninc.com/abcatg/2UServers.htm (the 64 bit one there) is a sample option. I'm not sure who you're calling, but this shouldn't be too hard to get taken care of.

Re:I'm a bit confused...

[AvitarX]

I could see an instance where 3 800 Mb channels of FireWire 2 would help throughput, and no, that's not a graphics card, and yes it is a PCI-X card.

I have also worked with High Speed color scanners, and a cutting edge one could easily need the RAM and PCI-X to scan to RAM and write inbetween stacks and to do it fast.

Also, to the questioner:

Buy Linux Format, they weview huge ass Linux servers with tons of RAM every month (though more like 8GB if memmory serves correctly).

Re:I'm a bit confused...

[Zapman]

Out of curiosity, what did you have on the other end of those firewire ports? Anything that could really push 800 Megabits? [1]

3 firewire2 ports is only 300 megabytes/s, which is less than the scsi3 360 cards, that fit happily within the bandwidth of a 64 bit, 66mhz PCI slot. It may be a PCI-X card, but I still contend that it doesn't NEED to be. I can't speak to the High Speed Color scanner. That'd probably be a pretty cool application. Though would you really need 16 Gb of ram?

[1] Now, I admit, I had to dig a little bit to find out if firewire2 was in megabits or megabytes. According to this article it's megabits)

Re:I'm a bit confused...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, I admit, I had to dig a little bit to find out if firewire2 was in megabits or megabytes.

The GP did clearly indicate "Mb" (Mega bits) as opposed to "MB" (Mega Bytes).

Re:I'm a bit confused...

[AvitarX]

I'm sorry I didn't mean to imply that I used these things just pointing out some wuick examples that come to mind. I guess I have never really seen a 64-Bit PCI slot (I work for a small company that beige boxes make shift servers when we nead one and we are cheap). I am currentlt expanding the capacity of one of these "servers" (we use 1-2 TB a year and I want to keep a longer archive live), and it would be nice to have many 800 Mb/s channels to pop many 250 GB drives in. I would expect 150 Mb/s a drive to be more than enough, so I could have 2-3 RAIDed(1) pairs of 250 GB drives on each channel, allowing me to get our archive live and go into the furture. With Gb ethernet, access to these would be pretty fast (throughput). Yes SCSI could work too, but price is king, this is not a use for 16GB of RAM obviously, just the thoughput.

As for teh scanner that was far more theroretical, but scanning 11 x 17 at even a modest resolution is very slow over SCSI (not seen SCSI 3 in action though, again we are not that big, we do a few hundred thousand here and there). Right now the bottle neck is transmitting the uncompressed image. If something used a card that took advantage of most of the PCI-X bus writing to disk could become a bottle neck (depending on compression) and you would then need lots of RAM to feed that stack of 1000's of sheets without waiting to write.

The only truly highspeed color scanner I have seen scanned to a local drive that you could access over the network or burn CD's from, I don't know what it ran or what its hardware was. The computer that drove it probably had lots of RAM and really fast PCI type bus, but I concede 16 GB of RAM would be exsessive, and if the output files are compressed early enough RAM levels could probably be fairly low, wqe usually look at 10 MB jpegs for output files (11 x 17).

I saw a scanner that could do 30 pages a minute color (8.5 x 11) depending on where the compression happpens and how much it is expected to be used with it could use a very large RAM buffer and fill it pretty quick (25 MB each (about)) puts 640 pictures in RAM at 15GB the stack feeders for these things are 1000's tall so I could see the controler/prossessor for one of these haveing lots of RAM.

My original comment was more just that I didn't assume graphics when I saw PCI-X and threw out a couple uses.

The next "server" I make will have PCI-X and it will not be for the graphics at all.

Re:I'm a bit confused...

[Anonymous Coward]

Infiniband cards (10G ethernet) do come in the PCI Express variety and most certainly can use the bandwith.

Re:I'm a bit confused...

[Cow007]

Don't forget the Apple Xserve!

16 GB RAM

[BladeMelbourne]

I can give you a 486 DH2 66 MHz with 16 GB of memory. Oh wait that's 16 MB. Sorry, my bad.

Re:16 GB RAM

[BladeMelbourne]

Damn beer fingers. DX2 not DH2...

PS: Comes with 10 mbps ethernet and sound card (both are those new ISA cards, believe it or not). Available for a limited time only!

Re:16 GB RAM

[RogerWilco]

Bleh,

I can offer a 486DX4-100 with 36MB RAM and a VESA Localbus Mach64 4MB
it's even got it's BIOS upgraded to support the 6.4 GB harddisk.
I call it the "486 on steroids" concept.

Re:16 GB RAM

[adamjaskie]

OOh, nice. I've got a VESA Localbus Diamond Stealth in a mobo with 40 megs of RAM and a 80.3MHz Pentium Overdrive for 486 processor, but I don't have a case for it, and the hard drive was transplanted to my server, which is a Pentium 233 MMX.

Re:16 GB RAM

[Cmdr TECO]

I can offer a genuine IBM PC -- remember, no one ever got fired for buying IBM -- with 16K.

Cassette tape interface, too.

I gotta ask

[Bilzmoude]

Yeah, I know... it is not an answer... and it doesnt really matter... but out of raw curiosity... what are you doing that you need that much memory? Bilz

Re:I gotta ask

[digitalchinky]

If you ever need to render a movie like finding nemo, you would appreciate a system with that much ram - or rather, a thousand networked systems with that much ram. (Render Farm)

I guess that is the most well known use for so much RAM, probably also high end databases.

Re:I gotta ask

[Atrax]

High-end databases would have been the first thing I'd have thought of actually. I was under the impression that render farms, as they don't have to run 24x7 for years on end, tend to be more in the vein of mahoosive clusters of cheaper boxes than a concentrated small cluster as you'd use for big databases (Oracle, DB2, SQL Server)

Re:I gotta ask

[digitalchinky]

I think you are spot on with the render farm comment! This appears to be the way of the future. String a thousand low end systems together for very little cost, achieve massive performance gains.

3D. The problem shifts toward the modelling application itself, I haven't found any that scale across multiple platforms - multiple processors yes, but not machines. Maya 6 doesn't do that, so I guess neither does anything else currently available. (I may be mistaken though, I kind of hope I am too)

Re:I gotta ask

[Atrax]

Agreed; farms/clusters seem to be the thing - I mean, look at what Google are doing - If I was looking at a big installation tomorrow I'd be inclined to take a set of blades or a bunch of generic-internal 1RU units from Dell or someone stacked together on a hefty gigabit network, though I suppose it really depends on what you want from the server at the end of the day.

I haven't kept up with software on render farms since I left my last design agency (now at a large software company which often contains $ in the name), but I would think if the software doesn't scale well right now, it's only a matter of time before the ability is easily within reach for even small studios.

Re:I gotta ask

[jonadab]

I can think of a couple of things...

How about working on enormous multilayer images in Gimp that are ultimately
destined to be printed as large, high-gloss posters? That'll eat some RAM.
The piddly little images I have worked with (you know, 600dpi for 8.5x11
letter-size, tiny little things) can use up more than a gigabyte each, with
only four layers; a complex image can easily have over fifty layers...

Video editing springs to mind.

Databases perform better if they can fit all the data in RAM, especially if
the data are read far more often than written. It's easy to imagine a DB
that goes past 4GB.

I'm sure there are other applications where you could want that much RAM.

Re:I gotta ask

[Bilzmoude]

Sure, I can think of a dozen reasons myself... there are a ton of modeling examples I can come up with off the top of my head... Even for website caching, it would be useful. I am more curious to know what the OP wanted it for in the sake of curiosity. :)

Re:I gotta ask

[computational super]

Playing solitaire.

Re:I gotta ask

[Glonoinha]

If you were going to run Linux 2.4 kernel on the cluster, what are your thoughts to the Mac Mini with Yellow Dog (or whatever distro you can get to work on it)?

Granted by itself it isn't the most powerful box on the hill, but since you can stack like 12 of them in the same space as a regular sized PC tower you could make up for it in massive quantities.

Re:I gotta ask

[Glonoinha]

Running a lot of virtual machines a'la VMware.

Re:I gotta ask

[Atrax]

Minis would be great, although I'm not sure how you'd rack 'em up, and I'm not aware of how their cooling will work in a situation like this.

My industry segment means I'd probably be more likely to be working with Windows though

Re:I gotta ask

[phsdv]

what are you doing that you need that much memory?

you could use it for designing, validating and generating test patterns of the next generation processors for example. A reasonable chip layout for 90nm grows quickly over 8Gbyte...

Re:I gotta ask

[Emil Brink]

We are working on that problem, in our own little way.

It will take time

[alexwcovington]

It always does. Though the complement of RAM in an average system has stalled over the past few years due to heavier disk caching and the moving of a lot of heavy graphic processing to subsystems, 16 GB of RAM will inevitably become less unusual. It will take a stable environment and software complement to break the 4 GB barrier, though.

Re:It will take time

[QuantumG]

Or you could just write better software. Really, I gotta wonder, what the hell are you running that requires that many pages to be in memory at the same time. Obviously you need this kind of stuff if you're running a huge database or something, but a desktop machine? You're kiding right?

Re:It will take time

[Atrax]

where does it say desktop in the post? I'm going blind!

Re:It will take time

[Andy_R]

It will take a stable environment and software complement to break the 4 GB barrier, though.

Such as Apple's OSX, their Power PC and Xserve ranges have supported 8Gb ram configurations for ages.

Re:It will take time

[Smitty825]

OS X does not totally take advantage of more than 4GB of RAM. It can address tons of RAM, but each running application is limited to a maximum of 4GB of addressable space in Panther.

When Tiger comes out, non-gui applications will be able to address the full 64 bit address space, however, GUI apps will remain limited to the 32 bit address space. See here for more info.

Re:It will take time

[tchuladdiass]

I think that would be implied by the requirement for a 16x pci express slot. As far as I'm aware, the only cards for these slots are video -- pci express raid & network cards do plenty with only a 1x pci express.

Re:It will take time

[Atrax]

aha!

Good point. I am blind after all.

fairly baffled by that one, though by my experience, maybe he needs 16GB+ in order to run Steam without his system taking a massive dump. /me resentful of Steam

Re:It will take time

[Atzanteol]

Games aren't the only things that need good video cards. Perhaps they do large 3-D renderings or something. I know a company that does fluid dynamics, and would require a system with lots of memory for the calculations, and a good video card to display the results.

Why must slashdotters be so myopic?

Re:It will take time

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Really, I gotta wonder, what the hell are you running that requires that many pages to be in memory at the same time.

How about the entire genomic sequences of >4 organisms? That way you can compare them to each other simultaneously, and learn which sequences are similar and which are different.

Here's another application, off the top of my head: simulate the gravitational mechanics of any large system of objects. Think you want to swap that kind of thing to disk?

I submit that there are many scientific applications of this much RAM; and you're not likely to recognize or understand the need unless you're in the field yourself. A LOT of bleeding edge computing work is being driven by scientific researchers who demand, really, a heavy amount of resources to do their simulations on--and computing structures that are designed for database work/gaming is just not comparable.

Personally, we use HP quad Opterons, with 64GB of RAM each (running Linux, btw); and while you could build that kind of thing yourself, the reliability issues at that scale just aren't worth it.

Re:It will take time

[Chris Hodges]

Machine vision systems spring to mind, such as:
http://digital.ni.com/worldwide/bwcontent.nsf/all/ 725E25B100E5BDEF86256F4400013228?opendocument
and with that sort of (image) data rate 16GB RAM is only a small buffer. Just a guess.

Re:It will take time

[Xner]

Really, I gotta wonder, what the hell are you running that requires that many pages to be in memory at the same time.

Three words: Computational Fluid Dynamics.

Re:It will take time

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Really, I gotta wonder, what the hell are you running that requires that many pages to be in memory at the same time.

The latest firefox beta release.
It has a memory leak.

Re:It will take time

[shaitand]

My experience in every case is that properly built beige box systems are FAR MORE reliable than the same systems from large oem vendors.

The large vendor may offer you a better support than you'd get with hardware manufacturer warranties that come with the equipment, but your more likely to need that support in the first place.

Large vendors will use the cheapest piece of crap they can find that meets the specifications on the table. Beige box builders will use the best piece of equipment that meets the specifications and is within budget. If you pay HP $10k for a server, you could have spent $5k on a beige box and been putting $1k more into the hardware than HP did.

If you spend the other 4k on extra components then you'll have your replacement even faster than HP could get them to you as well.

To a bean counter who doesn't want to confess that only technicians are qualified to make purchase decisions on technical components and equipment large vendors make sense, to technicians they do not.

Re:It will take time

[QuantumG]

Which is definitely something you would run on a server machine, not a desktop machine. Oh, and what 4 organisms would this be? I mean jesus, the human genome takes up less than a gig, even if you're representing each base pair with a word. Maybe you're comparing plant genomes, they're massive.

Re:It will take time

[cavemanf16]

I think the person who sent in this "Ask Slashdot" probably isn't quite sure about the hardware and addressing limitations of a 32-bit or 64-bit machine, nor the restrictions in place on the average SOFTWARE that runs on those machines. If the original poster really NEEDED more than 4GB of RAM, they'd be working in a University lab or a company performing very large calculations on datasets with custom written software, and there would be people who could hook them up with such heavy duty computing power.

My guess is that the poster has 'heard' of 16GB RAM architectures for your standard computer and his boss, upon hearing this news, decided that "16GB must certainly be better than 4GB for that ailing SQL Server - buy me one!" Too bad this type of computer will most likely not improve the ailing SQL Server all that much after it has been purchased, but that's the business world for ya!

My second guess is that the poster is now quite well informed of the options available to him thanks to all the /.'ers who pretend to hate googling this info for other people, and then post like crazy their findings while ranting about having to so the whole time. ;)

Re:It will take time

[merlin_jim]

Or for a more commonplace need;

how about uncompressed video editing? I've got an hour of vid I captured to uncompressed frames that's eating up 7 GB on my harddrive right now. I haven't even been able to compress it or chop it because my editing tool wants to load the whole thing into RAM. Even if the tool was written correctly for these really big files, I'd STILL rather load it into RAM, do all my edits at once, and then compress it down... much faster that way.

Try this link

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is an idea, why dont you just fucking google it.

Re:Try this link

[Leroy_Brown242]

It's amazing how a little google, goes a long ways . . . :)

Having fun here, I can come up with the following pretty quickly.

Total with Additional Items: $64,923.00

No problem, easily within my budget. ;)

Re:Try this link

[St. Arbirix]

Funny you mention them. Don't they store *all* of their database in RAM? That'd probably be a good company to ask.

Re:Try this link

[dubl-u]

Here is an idea, why dont you just fucking google it.

Here's a question I didn't find such a good answer to in Google: Was it really necessary to be such a prick?

If you would have read past the first question mark in the guy's post, he isn't just asking for the name of one place that's selling them. He's also asking when or even whether these systems will become common. For somebody who's about to drop tens of thousands of dollars, those seem like pretty good questions.

Funny, Google isn't coming up with such good answers on that. Boy, if only he could find a community of people who make their living on the cutting edge of technology. Maybe some of them would know! Perhaps you can share the Google query that will help him find somewhere like that?

Re:Try this link

[Anonymous Coward]

Try the first result.

Re:Try this link

[poningru]

Really? how about sending a $1000 my way, would love it for a media hub.

Open your eyes...

[DrPepper]

...there all over the place:

Dell Itanium
HP Itanium
IBM Itanium

Re:Open your eyes...

[Atrax]

The IBM seems a little light on maximum quoted disk as compared to the other two, which in themselves don't seem that massive (my desktop box has 280Gb, though admittedly not in a fault-tolerant config).

I'd be looking at extra storage too. SAN?

Re:Open your eyes...

[Jjeff1]

Exactly, you don't buy a machine of this size without attaching it to some large storage. Probably a SAN/NAS, though you could also go with a direct attached SCSI enclosure. It's not just because you might have a lot of data, you need to keep a (probably) 4 processor system well fed with data for best efficiency.

Poster should also keep in mind the heat, noise and power considerations of a box this size.

And just to put in my 2 cents, an HP DL145 support 2 Opterons and 16 GB memory for under $20K US.

Re:Open your eyes...

[Atrax]

Poster should also keep in mind the heat, noise and power considerations of a box this size

Hell yeah. Monster UPS underneath, to hold up the servers, switches, blah blah in the event of power outage, also the server room lights and the aircon and the security thereof so you can maintain operation or at least gracefully shut down in the event of outage. It has to be in a decent room of its own - you don't want the sound of a jet taking off in the corner of your open-plan office.

And failover? if you're gonna go one-big-box, then you're in the single point of failure area (ooh, we're back to clustering again).

Of course you may just want an impressive box in the corner and not really worry enormously about 24x7 ops. If that's the motivation though, why not just buy an impressive case with a bunch of flashing lights?

Re:Open your eyes...

[Kuad]

Anand just review a 4-way Opteron system from Sun, as well.

Looks nicer than the ProLiant for a bit less dosh as well. I don't think any of the Big Boys have PCI-e yet, mind you. What on earth do you need it for in a server with PCI-X slots?

Re:Open your eyes...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between "they're", "their" and "there". You'd think that with computers more powerful than the combined computing power of the planet during the Moon shots, YOU ILLITERATE CLODS WOULD GET IT RIGHT.

Re:Open your eyes...

[DrPepper]

Congratulations, you spotted a mistake on Slashdot - I'm really surprised that nobody else picked me up on that one. You are prize winner #SD3497459685654.

Once you pass the age of 6, you will begin to realise that minor writing mistakes are made everyday. Live with it.

Re:Open your eyes...

[cakefool]

why not just buy an impressive case with a bunch of flashing lights?

Curses - my business model uncovered. Rats.

Re:Open your eyes...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to chastise the submitter for not "opening their eyes", the least you can do is spell properly. I laughed at your stupid mistake too, you smug fuck.

Re:Open your eyes...

[JamesP]

... Itanium Sucks...

Go for Opteron Systems, BUT just have one thing in mind... 16Gb = 16 or maybe 8 memory modules, SO...

Re:Open your eyes...

[Bert64]

Maximum quoted disk is just the amount they will supply it preconfigured with, if the disks are standard scsi theres nothing to stop you filling up all available slots with the largest capacity drives you can find.

Re:Open your eyes...

[EchoesEchoes]

Pray, tell us: what is this 'Rats' business model you speak of?

Re:Open your eyes...

[cakefool]

Treadmill, dynamo, rats, flashing lights - whats not to get?

3 clicks from google

[QuantumG]

IBM eserver xSeries 445 8870 (88701RX) can take 64 GB of ram, that enough for ya? I got a wild idea, why don't the "editors" of Slashdot do a 5 second google search before posting pointless Ask Slashdot questions like this and save us all a lot of time. Hell, it might even improve the quality of the site!

Re:3 clicks from google

[miu]

I don't think that most of the questions are selected to answer the question. As you correctly point out, the question can be solved with a search engine within minutes. Rather the question is supposed to encourage discussion - why does he need 16 G RAM, what are other people using such systems for, maybe someone has lab tested systems from several vendors and wants to share their results, how does the support offered by various OSs actually work. etc.

Re:3 clicks from google

[willfe]

How is it the Slashdot editors' (or the question poster's) problem that you chose to bitch and moan about how easy it is to find an answer (not necessarily the right one) to the question? Seems to me you spent the time digging by choice; nobody put a gun to your head, did they?

The "quality" of Ask Slashdot has been on a steady decline lately, not because of a lack of quality of questions, but because of smartasses like yourself who'd rather complain than help.

There's exactly three kinds of Ask Slashdot replies I've seen in the last few months: 1) "Google it, you idiot!", 2) "Why would you ever want that, you idiot?", 3) The occasional, actually helpful, answer.

This is as idiotic as "concerned parents lobbying to get rid of violent TV" -- if you don't want to see questions that annoy you, take the Ask Slashdot section out of your preferences and quit reading the damned things!

I know, maybe you should post your smartass question as an Ask Slashdot question! That'd be fun. Harder to just claim "google it!" for that, isn't it?

And yes, I noticed you posted a link to some server, and included only its memory capacity. Does it match the other requirements in the Ask Slashdot question? You did actually read the whole question, right?

Re:3 clicks from google

[pclminion]

I got a wild idea, why don't the "editors" of Slashdot do a 5 second google search before posting pointless Ask Slashdot questions like this and save us all a lot of time.

I never get comments like this.

First of all, and most important, if you think that Slashdot is a "waste of time" why do you bother with it? It's pretty lame to come in here commenting and then complain that you're wasting your time. "This sucks, now I have to do this guy's research for him." Uhhh.. No, you don't have to do anything. You could have just skipped the article if it sucked that much. Pointless bitching.

Second, if the question hadn't been posted, we'd have no excuse to banter on Slashdot about systems which support 16 GB of RAM. The fact that the guy needed an answer to a question, which he could have got somewhere else, is irrelevant. If he'd asked somewhere else, we'd have been deprived of this opportunity to talk about big-memory systems.

What exactly do you want Slashdot to be? Apparently, a mutual ego-stroking fest. I agree that the guy's question could have been answered with 5 minutes of Googling, but who gives a shit about some guy who doesn't know how to search? I come here to read and participate in the discussions.

Re:3 clicks from google

[vbrtrmn]

Maybe they should just rename Ask Slashdot to I'm Too F*ing Stupid To Use Google

Re:3 clicks from google

[QuantumG]

Gee I don't know, because maybe if they didn't post this Ask Slashdot they could have posted another Ask Slashdot that actually required people who were knowledgable to reply? Then we could have had a discussion with these knowledgable people about their expert opinion and the conversation would actually be interesting.

Re:3 clicks from google

[QuantumG]

My point is that there's probably 20 Ask Slashdot questions in the queue and at least one of them is something that you can't get an answer for in 2 minutes of googling. The editors choose to post this question over those questions, why?

Re:3 clicks from google

[pclminion]

I didn't realize that Slashdot exists to interest you, personally. I think the discussion on this article is pretty much par for Slashdot. If you don't like it, read on to the next thing.

Re:3 clicks from google

[Mercury2k]

Why dont they do a search instead of posting to slashdot? Well, Ill hazard a few guesses:

- When late breaking news stories are slim pickin' you could always pull a simple question like this out of the hat so us geek's have something new to read after the last visit to the site 5 minutes prior

- Why do research when you can ask 1million or so geeks that live just to reload and reread the latest /. headlines and read insightful (well, sometimes ;) answers from a few dozen of the best moderated replies

Besides, if there were no new headlines for 24 hours or so, who the hell would visit slashdot? Gotta post some of those 1,000,000 or so "what if" or "what is the best way to..." questions sometimes.

That's funny

[Hulver]

I went to HP and was able to find one after about 5 clicks.

Or, I went to AMD's page here and clicked on one of the manufacturers listed. Where I found this dual opteron supporting 16GB ram. Took me all of 2 minutes.

Re:That's funny

[sam the lurker]

I can never seem to find _anything_ at the HP site in just 5 clicks.

So here is link to HP's ProLiant with an Intel processor that will support up to 32GB of memory.http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/ proliantml570/index.html.
Or a rack-mount box with the AMD Opteron(TM) that supports up to 16GB of memory http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/prolian tdl145/index.html.

Appro

[Gaima]

http://www.appro.com/ do same damn fine boxes, including 1U (yes, 1U) quad (yes, yes, quad) operton boxes that take 32GB of RAM.

I only wish the company I work for could afford boxes like that :(
Oh, and there's that "need" thing I keep hearing about.

Re:Appro

[foszae]

http://www.appro.com/product/server_1142h.asp

Mucho RAM Systems

[LordBhaal]

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8we_spec .html
Tyan does motherboards that will handle 16GB of RAM, and has 2 16xPCI-E slots, both running at full speed.

Any other large vendor (ie, SUN, etc) will quite happily sell you a system with >16GB of RAM, if you're willing to pay for it. I'm not sure about the 16xPCI-E slots however.

be happy

Don't buy x86/amd64

[keesh]

Power4 and UltraSparc kit has supported a *lot* more than 4GBytes of RAM for years. If you want serious kit, buy a serious arch.

Re:Don't buy x86/amd64

[fredan]

since when hasn't amd64 been able to address more than 4GB ram? It's a 64-bit arch! If I want a serious arch, then I would go for alpha.

Re:Don't buy x86/amd64

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

What's not 'serious' about AMD64? It has excellent integer and decent fp performance, solid hardware and software support, low cost, and true big memory support (48-bit physical).

UltraSparc, in particluar, offers lackluster performance (excluding some very specific applications) and is quite expensive. Power4 is also extremely pricey. Don't be ashamed to use AMD64 because it's 'only' x86+. It's a solid, high performance platform.

Wow.

[afay]

I just found a number of boards within about 30 seconds. That's a new low for an ask slashdot.

Here's a few

Every board there except for the single processor ones supports at least 16 GBs of memory. Many have 16x pcie slots and at least one has 2.

Wost. Ask Slashdot. Ever.

[Anonymous Coward]

You need a PCIe slot? ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY SURE ABOUT THAT? If you are doing high-end visualisation, why not get a dedicated graphics workstation that supports massive amounts of RAM and hefty graphics cards?

Gobs of memory & Linux

Gobs of memory & HP-UX

Gobs of memory & Solaris

Thousands of phamaceutical, oil and research companies around the world use this kit to get results, so why can't you?

Tyan / Opteron motherboards

[Scarblac]

There are quite a few motherboards that can handle 16G (or 32G) memory, they're mostly dual/quad Opteron boards. Tyan has a line.

If you also want PCIe x16, it's harder - Tyan lists this baby (Thunder K8WE), but I don't know if that one is actually available already.

Re:Tyan / Opteron motherboards

[Kris_J]

I was also going to point to Tyan's offerings. That particular board not only offers 16GB, but it also gives you two PCIe x16 slots. I was considering getting it and running a pair of 6800 Ultras for maximum frame rate, but it isn't available yet and I've instead decided to go with Gigabyte's 3D1 bundle.

Why? What?

[OrangeSpyderMan]

You seems to know you need 16GB - but you don't explain why or how you came to that figure. I guess it's to run an app or some DBs - do you have currently a box with 4G or 8G that's being RAM starved for doing the same task? 16GB + boxes are fairly commonplace as many have already pointed out - www.sun.com sells lots of them and the OS (Solaris) support is just fine for capacity well in excess of 16G, but as is HP-UX, AIX, OS/400, etc.... I do wonder if whoever asked you to source this box did the right thing if you're reduced to asking slashdot or beige box providers...

Windows XP

[Fubar420]

Oh come now people, isn't it clear? He wants to run WindowsXP without swapping!

Re:Windows XP

[Anonymous Coward]

This was a really lame joke, dude. XP can't even address this much memory, so how do you expect it to use it as swap?

Re:Windows XP

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, the joke works on so many different levels.

First, it's a OMG!! M$ IZ TEH GHAY!!!! joke. Those are ALWAYS funny, in fact, we need more of them.

Second, um, goto 1.

Ok, it appeals to the basic morons of society, your average linux or mac zealot fits into this nicely.

Next Ask Slashdot:

[MrHanky]

CaptCanuk's Boss asks: I've been charged with finding a qualified employee to handle big computer purchases. Now that most tech jobs are shipped to India, qualified personell in USA and Canada should be easy to find, but my employees aren't even capable of browsing Dell's web pages. I've tried everyone at my company, but they just scratch themselves and make loud screeching noises, then get back to reading Slashdot. So I ask: Where are those mythical competent workers? On the moon? Because they sure as hell aren't posting to "Ask Slashdot".

Re:Next Ask Slashdot:

[fm6]

There have always been incompetant bozos who ask "stupid" questions. It's a fact of life, and you can even argue that there are no "stupid" questions. It's just that these don't belong on Slashdot, and I can't understand why the editors don't see that.

Supermicro boards

[whovian]

allow large memory. The cost of 2 GB DDR sticks might make you cry, though.
http://www.supermicro.com/products/mother board/Xeo n800/

(edit out the url space)

Re:Supermicro boards

[ADRA]

I wanna bump the parent of this post. I find Supermicro boards to be very good quality. I've never had issues with Linux support on their boards. If there aren't Linux drivers on the board, they're usually downloadable from the component's vendor (Intel, ...).

Plus, for a 'vanilla' setup, the supermicro's are very price friendly. They're usually within the 400-1000 cad range with nice rack cases running around the same price range.

Spec sheet vs. reality

[wchin]

The Opteron systems I've seen that support > 8GB of RAM do so with registered ECC 2GB DIMMs. Until recently, it wasn't easy to find 2GB DIMMs. The cost is somewhere between $450 to $1200 per DIMM (for DDR333), and you'll need 8 of them. You can find some by Transcend on NewEgg. Crucial carries them at > $800/DIMM.

So even though there have been quite a few Opteron motherboards that have 16GB support on the datasheet, vendors haven't had 2GB DIMMs to fill them out readily.

Has anyone tried a 2GB DIMM in an Apple G5 system?

Apple XServe

[skinfitz]

The Apple XServe supports 16Gb of RAM, the just don't like to admit it. I found this image on their site while looking for stuff last year.

Re:Apple XServe

[tfiedler]

Uhh, no they don't. 8GB max..

I have 8 Xserve G5's each with 8GB. I asked Apple for 16GB and the enterprise rep I use said it's not supported. I don't know what that graphic is that you have but the real story is try to order it like that. You can't.

http://www.apple.com/xserve/specs.html

Re:Apple XServe

[skinfitz]

'Uhh' yes they do. They can take 2Gb DIMMS to a total of 16Gb. The graphic if you care to check the link is hosted on Apple's site.

As I said, Apple don't like to admit it and the official line is they are 'not supported' but then XServe RAID was initially 'not supported' on Windows or Linux either until people started plugging them in and finding that they worked. Now suddenly they are certified for Windows and Linux (and in fact I have two, one of which is connected to a Windows server and works just fine).

Re:Apple XServe

[tfiedler]

Yeah, I looked at the graphic.. I also tried to put in some 2GB sticks we ordered for another system and they wouldn't work. So, until Apple's verified it will work, I'm sticking with their official line. I have Apple RAIDs too and I wouldn't waste them on Windows ;)

Plenty of 'em

[cmaxx]

Buy a Sun, or an SGI.

Get a *nix machine

[vasqzr]

Silicon Graphics sells the Prism, you can get up to 6.1TB of RAM on some models.

The Usual Mac Response

[MacBorg]

It is possible (if you want to spend a small fortune) to cram a G5 tower with 8x2GB DDR3200 sticks. Not exactly a cheap proposition, but it can do the trick. OS X can address that much, the applications themselves are either limited to 2GB or 4GB, I don't recall which.

Re:The Usual Mac Response

[Anonymous Coward]

OS X can address that much, the applications themselves are either limited to 2GB or 4GB, I don't recall which.

Because, of course, the reason people buy boxes with 16GB of memory is so they can run 8 apps using a maximum of 2GB each.

That way you can neatly avoid the extra fault tolerance you would get from running 8 separate boxes with 2GB each.

And with the price of 2GB DIMMs as they are you can also avoid the cost savings of just having 8 separate boxes.

I wish I owned a MAC so I could chime in with non-sensical answers to every bloody question.

For what?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you need 16 GB RAM? Why else?


byte *data = malloc(16000000000);

Sun/IBM/HP (list could go on)

[bbrack]

Sun has UltraSPARC, Opteron and Xeon models IBM has POWER and Opteron models HP has Itanium, Xeon and Opteron models And it only took me 5 minutes to look at the specs of all the above models. Just look at the entry level servers or high end workstations on most manufacturers web sites...

HP Opteron, iWill

[t482]

Don't only look at amount of RAM look at access speed from the CPU and CPU contention. AMD HyperTransport addresses this somewhat.

HP DL585 supports model 852 processors, running at 2.6GHz, 1GHz HyperTransport and PC3200, running at 400MHz. 64-32GB of RAM depending on speed.

HP

For a white box check out iWill (or Tyan motherboards)

iWill 8 Way Opteron supports 64 GB RAM

IIRC you will need a 64bit processor

[bravenight]

An Opteron for example. Try a quick customization of your own: PC's For Everyone The default motherboard can take 8gb and higher end boards go from 16gb to 64gb. If Dell & friends can't supply you with what you want find a local custom build shop that has been around a while and has a good service record. As others have pointed out you can also build it yourself. For support there are plenty of third party on-site support companies, some specializing in Linux. Find one with reps in your area. HTH

Opteron

[photon317]

Buy an SMP opteron box, they'll support all the memory you want and then some. Most of the Opteron motherboards I've seen in use have 4 memory slots per cpu socket. So for instance with a quad opteron boards you could stick 16x 4G sticks in it for 64G of ram. Incidentally, it's not that only linux supports "64-bit addressing". The memory addressability is a function of the processor and/or memory controller (which is integrated in the processor in the case of the Opteron). There is no processor I know that can actually physically address 64 bits of memory (which would require something on the order of 65,536x 256Terabyte sticks to fill). IIRC correctly, the Opteron memory controller can physically address 40 bits of physical memory, which puts the theoretical limit for it at 1TB of RAM.

Re:Opteron

[mdielmann]

IIRC correctly, the Opteron memory controller can physically address 40 bits of physical memory...

The Department of Redundancy Department is looking for a new Director, and would like to offer you the job. Just reply with the PIN number for your primary bank card.

Re:Opteron

[norkakn]

is that the one for the ATM machine?

Which cave are you living in?

[The AtomicPunk]

That you haven't heard of Opterons? There are quite a few Opteron servers that support 64GB of RAM.

It's kinda scary that you're "in the business"

Windows 4GB process limit

[wimbor]

One additional thing to consider if you are planning to use Windows is the 4GB process limit (which is NOT the same as a total memory limit) in a 'normal' Windows server.

The operating system (Windows Server Enterprise Edition) will work with more than 4GB memory, but a process running on that server can only address 4GB of memory, of which 2GB is reserved kernel space (in normal circumstances, not including the /3GB switch, bla bla bla, ....).

Check out:

http://www.brianmadden.com/content/content.asp?i d= 69

Of course there are some tricks and things you can do, but still... keep this in mind.

This is due to the fact that you are working on 32-bit hardware that can only address 4GB directly, as far as I understand. Does Linux have this limit too? Or are there other 'tricks' that the Linux kernel applies to go above 4gb? Maybe other Slashdotters can elaborate on this.

Re:Windows 4GB process limit

[pclminion]

This is due to the fact that you are working on 32-bit hardware that can only address 4GB directly, as far as I understand. Does Linux have this limit too? Or are there other 'tricks' that the Linux kernel applies to go above 4gb? Maybe other Slashdotters can elaborate on this.

On IA32, the limit exists on Linux as well as Windows. This is a hardware limitation of 32-bit addresses, as you pointed out. However, it's possible to "window" the higher memory into a fixed area under the 4 GB limit, similar to how XMM and EMM worked in the days of MS-DOS and extended memory managers.

As for memory being reserved for kernel space, that's a necessity in order for the kernel to be able to differentiate between user space and kernel space. It would be horrifically inefficient for the kernel to have to scan through a bunch of tables to figure out if a particular pointer is a kernel pointer or a user pointer. Setting an arbitrary boundary between kernel and user space lets the kernel do a simple test -- is this pointer greater than the kernel space limit? If so, it's a kernel pointer.

On Linux the boundary can be set at either 2 GB or 3 GB.

Re:Windows 4GB process limit

[afidel]

While true today, it won't be for much longer Windows Server 2003 x64 is scheduled for a first half 2005 delivery (next couple months) and the big apps (Exchange and SQL) each have an update coming to support it (2003 SP2 for Exchange and SQL2005 for SQL Server). Linux gets around it by allowing 64bit equipment with 40bit physical addressing to act like what it actually is, 64bit. The kernal and libraries have been updated for a long time and some major apps have been 64bit clean for a long time due to running on other UNIX platforms where 64bit has been standard for some time, and others have been updated since the Opteron was launched and 64bit became cheaper. But you are partly correct that under a standard x86 kernel your processes are limited to 2GB, or 3-3.5GB with optional switches.

Re:Windows 4GB process limit

[webhat]

I've actually found the upper limit to be 3Gb, this meant that for the DS server I'm running I had to set all the caching options to a 2.5Gb threshhold leaving 0.5Gb for the DS process itself. (To be on the safe side.)

I just run multiple instances with partially replicated trees.

BTW. I agree with the fact that this is a little silly to be posting as "News". Then again I could always remove the "Ask Slashdot" headlines if I was really that bothed about this.

Right here

[guroove]

http://www.penguincomputing.com/products/workstati ons/tempest2100.php

Answers

[4of12]

Q: Where are these mythical large memory systems?
A: They've existed for years in mainframe and scientific computing circles, just as 64 bit hardware has existed (Alpha chip, SPARCv9, MIPS) for years and OS's capable of dealing with 64 bits have existed for years.

Q: Do you think such workstation configurations will become pervasive in the future?
A: Yes.

Q: Will it take Microsoft's Windows XP 64 bit to legitimize their existence in larger quantities?
A: "Legitimize" is a word I don't like to use in the same sentence as Microsoft. But your intuition is correct. Once Microsoft brings out a reliable 64 bit OS that is backward compatible with its 32 bit offerings, you'll see more popularity and lower prices for systems with more than 4 GB of memory. Let's hope everyone's learned the Bad Way of Doing Things from the 16->32 bit Windows transition a dozen years ago. OTOH, I suspect glitches in the transition will be leveraged to encourage upgrading...

Re:Answers

[ADRA]

"A: "Legitimize" is a word I don't"...

XEON based Intel solutions have had extended RAM support for years. There's nothing new with Intel based systems having more than 4GB or ram. You just need an OS that supports the PAE extension. This boosts the memory capacity of the OS from 4GB (32bit) to 64GB (36bit). Linux and Windows have supported PAE for quite a while. (Microsoft artificially disables the ram based on the version of windows you're using)

The difference between 32bit w/PAE and 64bit is that a program running on the 32bit OS will only access a maximum virtul memory space of 4GB, while a program running on the 64bit variant can access the entire virtual memory space that the OS can.

If you're running a 32bit compiled app on a 64 bit processor, you're also limited to the 4GB space as well.

All over the place

[�berhund]

Dell PowerEdge 6600, 6650, 7250...
IBM xSeries 336, 346...
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherb oard/Xeo n800/
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/barebone. html

In short, every place I've checked so far.

Dude

[dtfinch]

Dell will sell you one at only a 500% markup over cost.
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?c=us&cs=555&l=en&oc=PE7250PAD&s=biz

"Discuss among yourselves"

[MarkusQ]

Well they certainly do encourage discussion. I think you could post a question about rubarb pie to Ask Slashdot at start a spirited discussion about Google and how to use it. What I wonder is, is there and question that you could "Ask Slashdot" that would encourage a discussion about something other than Google?

Hey, maybe I should Ask Slashdot that!

--MarkusQ

took me 23 seconds to find that...

[j-turkey]

...Sun sells this for relatively cheap (although those 4GB sticks are ~$2200 a piece).

I'm a bit confused -- did you only mean whitebox systems, or were you just too lazy to actually look at any of the big manufacturers?

3 clicks from google-And then you have eggroll.

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony is that there's something else you all can be doing instead of reading Slashdot, and answer "Ask Slashdot" questions.

Re:3 clicks from google-And then you have eggroll.

[willfe]

Heh, yeah :) You're guilty of it too, though :P

hp xw9300

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

The recently released hp xw9300 is exactly what you want. It has room for 2 Opteron processors, up to 16gb of ram, and dual PCIe x16 graphics cards.

It starts at around $1900, a decent price for a dual-proc workstation. It has SATA II 300, an NVIDIA chipset (NForce Professional 2200; based on NForce4) and 8 dimm slots for registered DDR.

Here is the board that has me drooling.

[MrSnivvel]

http://tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8we.html That bad boy has two PCI-Express slots to boot. Son, you just have to look for them...

/. strikes again

[Anonymous Coward]

So...the Slashdot moderators haven't discovered Newegg.com yet? Or any of the other myriad places that actually stock server mobos? Is the scope of their system building knowledge really limited to placing an order with Dell?

You should...

[sofo]

Find some suppliers that are flat-out chuckleheads.

There are boards out there that support 16GB of memory and resellers that are happy to sell them to you.

Keep looking and I'd suggest looking at Tyan's web site first then asking around for a supplier who can source their large memory boards for your system(s).

Re:You should...

[sofo]

Whoops... that should be *aren't* flat-out chuckleheads. :)

This is really simple

[MerlynEmrys67]

Go look at a Sun 20z

The large system there has 4 GB RAM (4 1Gig memory sticks - substitute 8 2 GB RAM sicks gets you 16 GB memory). True, these don't have PCIe - Sun won't be getting PCIe until later this year, but the IO on this system isn't to be beatten.

If you want even more memory, try the 40z and 16 2GB RAM sticks for even more memory.

Don't expect Intel systems with Dual memory controllers to get you there - you need real systems.

How about the Intel SE7520BD2

[SmallSpot]

According to the docs at http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/s e7520bd2/sb/CS-013543.htm, this board supports up to 24GB with the right kind of RAM, assuming you can find 4GB RAM. With 2GB sticks, you could get 12GB.

One use

[Mycroft_514]

I can see is in CASE tools. I already was forced up to 2GB of RAM and that won't be enough for very much longer.

If I had to model the Peoplesoft tools, well 4GB won't do that either.

New Tyan Boards have PCIe & 16GB

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

Tyan just released a new series of Opteron boards that have PCIe & 16GB:

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/matrix.html

They're the ones with the "E" at the end of their names [e.g. Thunder K8WE -vs- the older Thunder K8W].

Supermicro

[Anonymous Coward]

How bout just google?

Workstation? No. Server.

[Guspaz]

Workstations don't come with that much memory because a machine with 16GB of RAM cannot be classified as a workstation.

Go look at server motherboards:

http://tyan.com/products/html/opteron.html
http ://tyan.com/products/html/xeon.html

There are TONS of 16GB and 32GB motherboards on that page.

And the one after that (etc... You get the idea)

[harryman100]

CaptCanuk's Boss's Boss asks: I've been charged with finding a qualified employee to handle Human Resources Matters in our IT department. It appears that all our employees in this area have become to lazy/stupid to do their own job, and insist on outsourcing all of the actual work to India, and all of the research to Ask Slashdot. Help me, I'm too busy to spend 30 seconds looking up the answer.

SGI

[lovebyte]

If you want a lot of RAM, try the SGI Altix 3000. It's a server (not a workstation), but you can have up to 24 TB of RAM. Yes, that's 24 TERA BYTES.

16GB RAM is not that much

[ebh]

I can't believe how many people here have asked why the person needs a 16GB RAM machine in the first place.

There are hundreds of applications that need that kind of RAM, and some that require terabytes. But what makes me scratch my head is that it's only eight times the RAM you'd get in a reasonably equipped desktop PC. Is it that hard to think of a shared resource that might need to scale up a bit?

The Answer Is Simple...

[bjjohnson]

All you really needed to do, instead of ask slashdot although an interesting topic, was search any of the big Manufacturers. It only took me 1 minute to find an answer... http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/carrier_grade/ products/cx2600/index.html Although it won't have your PCI-E slot, I ask, what do you need that for???? 16GB of RAM is an insane amount mainly used for rendering of large (motion picture length films) graphics, or things like termnial servers and DB servers. I think the person who submitted the question should have to answer those questions... anywho.. I prefer the HP line of servers. The spare part numbers alone make them a lot easier to trouble shoot and get replacement parts!

The Longhorn cometh...

[addweight]

Its obvious, msft wants to test longhorn... hmm 16 gig RAM. I wonder who was it that said 640K should be enuff for everyone...

-av

are you...

[same_old_story]

... getting ready to run longhorn?

Here ya go

[Punboy]

Go here: http://www.penguincomputing.com/ More specifically: http://www.penguincomputing.com/products/servers/a ltus_opteron_1u_servers.php http://www.penguincomputing.com/products/servers/a ltus_opteron_2u_servers.php And workstations: http://www.penguincomputing.com/products/workstati ons/index.php

Oh, here is EXACTLY what you want

[Punboy]

http://www.penguincomputing.com/products/workstati ons/niveus800.php

Features:
Full-Tower Workstation Chassis
Dual Intel® Xeon® Processors w/ EM64T
800MHz Front Side Bus
Up to 16GB of PC2700 DDR RAM
Two External 5.25" Optical Drive Bays
Four Internal or Hot-swappable 3.5" SATA Hard Drive Bays
One PCI-Express x16 Slot
One Gigabit LAN port on Motherboard

Reading through these replies...

[NRP128]

I saw maybe 5 or so positive, actually on topic responses, 100 or so saying "Google it you idiot" and another 20ish stating something along the lines of "you #@*#$ Stop wasting my time!".

If you feel this is waste of time/space etc, don't waste everybody else's time and space by posting a reply. Just STFU and STFO. The man asked a question. If you're not going to answer him, keep your shit to yourself. He's not just looking for hardware from the sound of it. He wants something specific from a vendor. Googling, or searching Newegg and Dell aren't viable options. Dell.com sucks, IMHO, even the business side, because there's too much that i know they can do that they don't list. And calling them without knowing somebody there to talk to who knows his shit will only elicit the comments like the poster said "Why would you need 16GB of RAM?!"

I will grant that more information needed to be provided, such as intended use, why it has to have a 16x PCIe slot, etc. But with the abbreviated space slashdot gives each post i can see the reason for being brief.

A wisecrack is one thing, but a) most of you got modded up for things that should have been modded down as redundant. b) most of you got modded up for saying nothing prevailent or helpful concerning the original question. c) most of you just need to quit trolling posts and go do some real work.

Spec sheet vs. reality

[Yobgod Ababua]

I just bought a few 16GB Opterons a few months ago (and ordered more last week).

The 2GB DIMMs ran us around $880 each (registered ECC).

You can also get 4GB DIMMs now, but they'll run you about $2500 a pop. (yow!)

The company I'm dealing with (rackable.com) also offers a quad opteron system that has 16 slots, so you can get 16GB with 1GB DIMMs or 64GB with 4GB DIMMs (and 40 grand).

These systems are replacing a Sun V880 that previously provided our large memory support, and run the tools we have much faster.

Sun

[PhunkySchtuff]

Look at the Sun Java Workstations for a decently=priced, Tier-1 Opteron system.
No, they don't have to have anything whatsoever to do with Java if you don't want them to.
They are certified to run three families of Operating System - Linux, Solaris or Windows.
They're fast, built well and, most importantly, they have backup support that's second to none.

Retail offering exactly what he asked for ...

[Glonoinha]

Dell will sell you a nice PowerEdge 6600 with 32G (or less) with Windows 2003 Server EE which happily and eagerly runs on and will take advantage of up to 8 CPUs and 32G of memory.

If he can get away with only 12G of memory he can run a significantly cheaper PowerEdge SC1425.

I say significantly cheaper, but not cheap as it isn't (figure $15k with the Win2003ServerEE license on the cheap one, loaded with memory, and easily twice that for the more expensive one.)

HP xw9300 supports 16GB, PCIE x16

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to match your specs:
http://www.hp.com/workstations/pws/xw9300/specs.ht ml

Excerpts:

Operating systems options Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional SP2
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 3 Update 4 (64-bit)
HP Installer Kit for Linux (includes drivers for 64-bit OS version)
The HP xw9300 will support Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional x64 Edition when available from Microsoft.
Processor Single or dual AMD Opteron 200 series processors with AMD64 Technology & HyperTransport; 246 (2.0GHz), 248 (2.2GHz), 250 (2.4GHz), 252 (2.6GHz)
Front Side Bus 800 MHz HyperTransport (246, 248, 250) 1 GHz HyperTransport (252)
Chipset NVIDIA nForce Professional with AMD-8131 HyperTransport PCI-X tunnel
Memory 16 GB maximum; 8 DIMMs; DDR1-400 ECC (512 MB, 1 GB, 2 GB); up to 12.8 GB/sec throughput
Expansion slots 6 slots: 2 PCI Express x16 graphics and I/O; 3 full-height PCI-X slots (one 133 MHz, two 100 MHz slots); 1 full-length PCI slot

One word:

[Anonymous Coward]

Java

Just call Dell...

[Anonymous Coward]

They are happy to sell you large ram systems. Although, for what Dell charges for ram, you should get your ram from Kingston or another vendor.

The soon-to-be-discontinued dell poweredge 2650 (dual xeon capable) servers support 12 GB of ram. They're nice boxes, remote out-of-band management & monitoring, not that expensive. If you don't need all the ram slots, it can even have hot-spare ram.

I'm very happy with the 3 that I have.

Depends

[LWATCDR]

Do you want a workstation or a server.
For a workstation system you may want to look at he Silicon Graphics Prism. For servers you can get systems from IBM, Sun, or HP.

opteron systems

[bonezed]

you can build them yourself or buy from Dell/IBM/HP/Sun

most support upto 32gb ram

Lateral thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

iSeries from IBM. What more could you ask for?

Parent is WRONG, segments don't help

[Anonymous Coward]

The x86's segmentation gives it an additional level of virtual addressing before you reach the physical address bus, which complicates things.

Including segments, an 80386 virtual address consists of 48 bits: 16 bits of segment selector, and 32 bits of offset within that segment. Of that segment selector, 2 bits are used for the "requested privelege level" and select different views of the same segment. 1 bit is used to select the local vs. global segment table. Generally, a process can use all of its local segment table (13 bits), and some of the global segment table, but the latter is shared with the operating system.

So call it 13.5 bits. The actual number of different segment+offset combinations that can be specified in 45.5 bits.

Each segment selector value causes a lookup in the appropriate (local or global) segment descriptor table. The descriptor contains a 32-bit base address and a 32-bit limit. (Actually, a 20-bit limit, plus a "granularity" bit wqhich says whether the limit is in bytes or 4K pages.)

If the offset is beyond the segment descriptor's limit, the address is invalid. Otherwise, the Intel-unique "linear address" (also a virtual address) is formed by adding the 32-bit segment offset to the 32-bit segment base.

The 32-bit linear address is an addressing space bottleneck. Unless you have segments overlapping in linear address space (which would defeat the purpose here), you can only have 4 GB of segments marked as present in the operating system at any one time. And that limit includes the operating system itself as well as the user process.

The 32-bit linear address is then put through a page table system like any other processor's, which produces a 32- or 36-bit physical address. 36-bit addressing can't expand any single process' address space beyond the 32-bit linear address space limit, but you can have multiple such processes in memory at once.

Now, it is possible to mark segments as "not present", so you can do swapping and virtual memory on a segement basis, but this raises a couple of issues:

1. You only have 6 segment registers whose corresponding descriptors are loaded into the processor's segment descriptor cache (cs, ss, ds, es, fs, gs). Loading a segment register to access more is quite slow.
2. You have to have several segments present at once to get anywhere (at least two, if you want to be able to copy data between segments, and maybe you don't want to limit yourself to one of those two being the code segment), so your segments can't all be 4 GB long. So you have to have a segment limit less than 32 bits to fit a minimal number of segments into the linear address space at once. So the practical limit is less than the 45.5 bit number cited above.
3. You have to do your swapping on a whole-segment basis. If you make segments small, you haven't gained any address space, just moved bits from the segment offset to the segment descriptor. If your segments are at least 1 MB, swapping them gets more time-consuming. Up to the 36-bit physical address limit, you can just move page table pointers around to move segments into and out of the linear address space, but it's still a bit intricate.
4. Oh, and if you make your segments variable-sized so you can have big arrays without the complexities of the so-called huge memory model, then you can have fragmentation in the linear address space.

What it boils down to is that there's an extremely theoretical possibility, but you could do almost as well in straight software (especially using so-called pointer-swizzling tricks), and so no operating syste, has ever tried to break the 4 GB virtual address barrier that way. And it takes a complete and total overhaul of the operating system's memory management to try.

Indeed, precisely because all modern operating systems just set the segment registers to point to some large fixed values and leave them alone, modern x86 processors have inefficient support for segment register loading. They d

Two words:

[Anonymous Coward]

Dot NET.

Tyan offers this

[Anonymous Coward]

I got this information from grokking Google:
Tyan is currently marketing the Thunder K8QS Pro (S4882) and Thunder K8QS (S4880) 4-way Opteron motherboards. Both boards are based on the AMD 8000 series chipset.
The Thunder K8QS Pro sports sixteen 184-pin 2.5V DDR DIMM sockets for up to 32GB (333/266/200) of memory. Each processor is directly connected to 4 DIMM sockets. ... Both of these motherboards support 4 Opteron processors (850s or 852s). I suppose you could argue that each processor only gets 8 GB (each), but it isn't a bad amount. Of course, these systems work best with Linux. You can try beta/amateur/kid-stuff systems on them, but if you are really serious,get Linux.

64 bits

[maxphunk]

Try the HP ProLiant DL line (or similar). Grab an Opteron or EM64T box, drop in RHEL AS4 (or another 64-bit distro), and your rollin! Of course, you can always call Sun. I've got a SunFire V20z which is rockin' with FreeBSD, OTOH don't write off the UltraSPARC...

Time to change careers

[Brandybuck]

You're not going to find this stuff at Fry's, Circuit City or CompUSA. Here comes a big cluestick. It's going to hit you upside the head. Watch for it. Here it comes. Wait. Wait. Whack! Mass market consumer systems do not run 64-bit operating systems or have 16Gb RAM, so stop shopping at mass market consumer outlets staffed by kindergarten dropouts.

Windows 2003

[squison]

Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition 32-bit supports up to 32GB, 64-bit up to 64GB..

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluat ion/sysreqs/default.mspx

We have several HP Proliant DL580's with 16GB RAM running 2003.

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/platfor ms/index-dl.html

Response from Original Ask Slashdot Poster

[CaptCanuk]

Post Mortem

Having read nearly all the responses to my original "Ask Slashdot", I've come to a couple of conclusions.

Slashdot Community:
1. Most slashdot comments are written by people who read the first line of something and jump the gun. They pull out a canned response and fire it off before reading the rest of the comment/article (RTFA is getting very common).
2. Some users just don't comprehend what they read. They are fast to point out that google has tonnes of links to major retailers and selectively ignore set requirements.
3. IF they don't ignore, users strip requirements because "obviously" they know better. Why would I need 16 GB's of RAM? Why did I use the word workstation? Why require x16 PCIE slot? It's because that was what was mandated to me. It's a reasonable request for our purposes (validation).

Common mistakes:
1. Server vs Workstation: Many responses decided I needed a server instead of a workstation. How many of those people noted that 99% of all servers do NOT come with x16 PCIE slots.
2. The insistence that there was a simple solution to my question. I wouldn't have posted without scouring google; it's my homepage for a reason.
3. Price: The real reason I switched to a beige box was because very, very few vendors support 16GB RAM in their workstations. One of the major OEM's quoted me $24K USD for the RAM alone! Many others were incapable of getting such a configuration in any of their systems. Going beige was an attempt at opening up my options.
3. Availability: Most machines at this level only take ECC Registered RAM and are dual channel. Finding a 2GB DIMM of RAM was difficult (esp in Canada); getting 8 was impossible. No one could get me 8 sticks within a month. Calling one of the big 5's sales team resulted in a quote of availability for the RAM by Winter 2005! I was considering getting a source to ship it from Korea - but that has a DOA penalty.

My own faults:
1. I didn't list exactly what I wanted the machine for. This was partly because I didn't want to give away where I work and also wanted to ensure that the submission was "juicy" enough for the Slashdot moderators.
2. I didn't list the exact specifications of the machine (should have listed 64 bit AMD/Intel machine, x16 PCIE, and 16GB of RAM).

Conclusion:
As for my intentions behind writing in, I did it to ask the cream of the technology crop what they might know/suggest in terms of hardware as well as get their views on where workstation memory requirements were going. Though I got a lot of noise, I was glad that there were a few worthwhile comments and I thank those users. I was also interested in the great conclusions people made as to what I was intending to do with the machine (genome project and all).

I wish more people did post-mortem's of their "Ask Slashdots".

And MrHanky, my boss had a good chuckle at your comment; in fact, he gave me the suggestion to Ask Slashdot :)

Re:Response from Original Ask Slashdot Poster

[syukton]

Actually, I have something to add.

Something you may find particularly useful.

http://bizrate.lycos.com/buy/refine__at_id--19,a t_ id19--more,cid--419.html

The title of that page is: "All Maximum Supported RAM in Motherboards"

I wish more price search engines supported search on this criteria. Anyhow, go buck wild, there's quite a few options out there.

Supermicro alone has quite a few options: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeo n800/?chp=E7525
"Supporting dual Xeon processors with an 800MHz system bus, the E7525 chipset optimized workstation platform utilizes PCI-Express x16 expansion for top-of-the-line graphics."

Sounds like they're right up your alley...

Re:Response from Original Ask Slashdot Poster

[CaptCanuk]

The link was useful. Unfortunately, it did not list any 16GB motherboards (only up to 12GB).

Apparently, Intel Reps suggested I shouldn't buy Supermicro for 16GB RAM purposes.

Re:Response from Original Ask Slashdot Poster

[syukton]

Look more closely. The list is not well sorted at all. (I hate that, when the options I want are all there, just not in any sensical manner. It's like the UI has the capability I desire in the most user-unfriendly way possible. A shame Jef Raskin just passed on, he could teach these folks a thing or two about UI design.)

16GB: http://bizrate.lycos.com/buy/products__at_id19--26 9846-43992,cid--419.html
32GB: http://bizrate.lycos.com/buy/products__at_id19--13 26-43992,cid--419.html

Supermicro has plenty of them

[Anonymous Coward]

Supermicro makes about 10 motherboards that have that accept 16GB or more.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/X eo n800/

Depends on what you're looking for.

[DanBeai]

If it's a dual processor workstation you are looking for then the Sun Java W2100z should do it. Runs Solaris and Linux, Wouldn't want to slow it down with Windows.

"first in a new line of AMD Opteron-based workstations from Sun"

"Up to 16 GB of PC3200 memory (eight DIMM slots, 2GB DIMMs when available)"

Key Applications:

• Defense / Military Intelligence Applications
• Electronic Design Automation (EDA)
• Mechanical Computer-Aided Engineering (MCAE)
• Medical Imaging
• Scientific Research
• Seismic Data Visualization and Interpretation
• Digital Content Creation

How deep are your pockets? 2Gb sticks of ECC are pretty pricey; http://www.memorysuppliers.com/memorysuppliers/kin 2gbpc26re.html/

Here is the system up close at Q Associates; http://www.sun.qassociates.co.uk/workstations-sun- java-w2100z.htm/

Here is a good review of one from AnandTech, they also build a 'white box' they use for comparison and at some $3,000 cheaper than the Sun version which was at over $8,000 at the time of the review; http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=22 55

Sun Java, (n.d.). Sun java w2100z. Retrieved Feb. 24, 2005, from Sun Java W2100z Web site: http://www.sun.qassociates.co.uk/workstations-sun- java-w2100z.htm.

AnandTech, (2004). Sun's w2100z dual opteron workstation. Retrieved Feb. 24, 2005, from http://www.anandtech.com/ Web site: http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=22 55.

MemorySuppliers, (n.d.). Infineon 2gb pc2100 266mhz registered ecc ddr sdram. Retrieved Feb. 24, 2005, from MemorySuppliers.com Web site:http://www.memorysuppliers.com/kin2gbpc26re.h tml.

True POWER systems

[SpamMonkey]

Hiya,

At work we currently use IBM's own offering of the P670 as our main database server. This little beauty (I say little but she's huge) has 8 processors and 48gb's of RAM. Running on a logical partition so we can simply reboot the system and reassign either memory or CPU's as needed.

Get one, actually, get two. You won't be sorry.

SGI

[_randy_64]

Altix 350

Altix 3000

The Altix 350 can take something like 384 GB of RAM, and the 3000 can take 24 TB! That should hold you for a while. Maybe. ;)