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From: fredc@umriscc.tmc.edu (Fred Clauss)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: UNIX sys V4.0
Message-ID: <1592@umriscc.isc.umr.edu>
Date: 1 Nov 90 20:59:14 GMT
References: <9010025@hpfcso.HP.COM> <15404@cbmvax.commodore.com> <2401@sauron.Columbia.NCR.COM>
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In article <2401@sauron.Columbia.NCR.COM> Steve McClure writes:

>I guess the 68k and 386 versions are different.  386 uses 2x memory size for
>swap.  Won't you be limiting yourself to 10M of application space this way?
>My understanding is that you have to have swap for the whole application.
>Seems that this was done to avoid deadlocks.

Yes, there is a difference.  To illustrate the point, I'll give you a little
Sun story...  I work every day on a Sun 3 with 8M of real memory.  I run
SunView :-( with a bunch of tools and shells always on the screen.  One of
those processes is a performance meter showing my swap activity.  During normal
use, there is seldom a swap.  I configured my setup that way because the machine
I work on has no disk (so swapping innvolves an NFS access).

The shop I work in used to have a 386i with 8M.  I tried it out once, with
exactly the same setup as I use on the Sun 3.  The 386i was paging constantly!
It's no wonder that we no longer have the 386i.  Even in this resource-starved
atmosphere, nobody wanted to use it.  The moral of the story is: if you go
386, expect to need more memory and swap space than with a 68K system.


-- 
Fred Clauss                  INTERNET:  fredc@isc.umr.edu (preferred)
P.O. Box 815                  		or fredc@ee.umr.edu
Rolla, MO 65401		     BITNET:    S081192@UMRVMA