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Notebook Makers Moving to 4 GB Memory As Standard
akintayo writes "Digitimes reports that first-tier notebook manufacturers are increasing the standard installed memory from the current 1 GB to 4GB. They claim the move is an attempt to shore up the costs of DRAM chips, which are currently depressed because of a glut in market. The glut is supposedly due to increased manufacturing capacity and the slow adoption of Microsoft's Vista operating system. The proposed move is especially interesting, given that 32-bit Vista and XP cannot access 4 GB of memory. They have a practical 3.1 — 3.3 GB limit. With Vista SP1 it seems that Microsoft has decided to fix the problem by reporting the installed memory rather than the available memory."
Because OS X Leopard CAN access 4GB of RAM. Let's see if Apple also joins the fray. Then again, 4GB is way too much, because after all 640KB should be enough for everyone.
What an ingenious solution! No wonder Microsoft is the leading innovator in IT! That's SO innovative it makes me sick. It's hard enough trying to explain to customers why they shouldn't waste their money on 4GB of memory and a 1GB video card only to lose a quarter of it in real life, now the OS is trying actively trying to make me look like a liar too.
Stop with the kludges and force the developers along. 32 bit came with the 386 era and lasted a good while - a very good run indeed. 64 bit would last beyond our lifetimes anyway, I doubt we will even come close to the limits of addressable memory there (hopefully this isn't the new 640k comment) -- so there is no point in stalling it indefinitely.
In another few years, I might be able to run Eclipse.
From the summary: "They claim the move is an attempt to shore up the costs of DRAM chips, which are currently depressed because of a glut in market."
The article says: "While first-tier notebook vendors such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Toshiba are planning to roll out 4GB notebooks starting from the first quarter of 2008, the move is expected to give a boost to the DRAM market, according to memory module makers."
The article does not say that this is a deliberate attempt to increase DRAM price. And if it was, wouldn't it be illegal?
It sounds like they should be making wiis and not memory. Solve a few problems at once
Check out my sysadmin blog!
Or at least, supervision by people who know how computers work? 4GB is perfectly sensible for a 32-bit x86; the virtual address space is only 4GB, but the physical address spaces is larger (at least 36 bits on all popular processors). Yes, that means it's awkward to use more than 4GB in a single application, but so what? Using more than 4GB across the system is perfectly transparent.
Also, what's with slamming Microsoft over the "slow" transition to 64-bit? 64-bit XP has been out for, like, three years now. It runs 32-bit applications, because the x64 architecture makes it so ridiculously easy you'd have to intentionally break it. 64-bit Linux does the same, because it takes, like, a line of code to do so. If software makers aren't producing 32-bit apps, it's probably because their customers haven't demanded they do so yet; and the customers probably haven't demanded it because it's unusual for a single application to need 4GB of RAM. Finally, those applications that can frequently use gigondo amounts of RAM in a single virtual address space (e.g., Oracle) for the most part had 64-bit binaries available right out of the gate.
Laptops, which have been a nice fat cash cow to OEMs, are steadily becoming cheaper and cheaper. Nowadays, we have retailers selling laptops for about 500 euros with specs that a couple of year ago were selling for a lot more than 1500 euros. A while back the average laptop price tag was about 1200 euros and nowadays it went down to 800 euros. That's a heck of a revenue cut.
So the OEMs are forced to add another fancy selling point, like upgrading the specs once again, in order to keep making the big bucks. They don't give a damn if it brings any added value to the product or if it even functions properly. What matters is some fancy little side remark on the laptop's brochure that makes their fancy little product be picked by the vast hordes of consuming sheep. Who cares if it makes sense or if it's even usable. What's important is that them flock falls for that "OMG! IT'S N+1!!!" and promptly spend their cash, specially for the "it's bigger than my neighbour's" bragging rights.
This sort of thing isn't exactly new. In fact, it's the repeat of another similar marketing push, which was the "32-to-64bit" campaign. The fancy stickers advertising the new and improved 64bit 'puters for the "OMG IT'S TWICE THE BITS!!" effect were all over the place, which earned quite a few hardware sales. Yet, the fact is that the brand new 64-bit 'puter could only run on the 32-bit legacy mode, as they were shipped with a 32-bit operating system and the OEMs shipped hardware without ever thinking on releasing 64-bit drivers or even releasing the hardware specs.
So those OEMs will, once again, sell hardware that will not be usable by the user, at least as advertised. It doesn't matter to them. The only thing that matters is the sales revenue, specially in this day and age where we are starting to see sub-300 euro hardware. And screw the consumer.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
None. Microsoft just redefines darkness as the standard.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Well back in my day we shifted disks on an abacus and made the beeping noises ourselves! :)
Windows 32-bit operating systems really do not play well with more than 3Gb of memory. Check out what Microsoft says about it.
The address space you'd normally use to address memory beyond 3.5gigs (or thereabouts) is reassigned for talking to other stuff. It's a simple 32bit limitation - can't only be talking to the RAM after all. As others have pointed out throughout this thread, the problem does not exist in 64bit architectures.
5 years ago, nobody would have thought that we'd run into this problem at all. Remember those times? Everybody and their mum was just about getting ready to jump onto the 64Bit bandwagon with AMD charging in front. And then, while nobody (especially not AMD) was paying attention, we kinda veered off-course into a multi-core world instead and all of a sudden, people stopped caring about 64bit. After all, you had a larger net performance gain from upgrading to 2 32Bit cores than to one 64Bit one. And now, we're finally running out of address space.
The trouble is that in contemporary chipsets in 32-bit mode the upper 1G or so of physical memory overlaps with the address space for the PCI bus.
Error: password can't contain reverse spelling of ancient Chinese emperor
Surely you should say "There's very little in this world...". Otherwise all /.ers would have girlfriends.
32-bit OSes can't reach 2^32 bits of memory due to hardware IO ranges. Duh.
So why didn't you install 64-bit Ubuntu? Flash works'n'everything in 7.10 64-bit. VMware? They have 64-bit builds. Everything else I run is FOSS. There is no reason not to install it, AFAICT!
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.