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From: barry@pico.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: 8MB Blues (or M'ma vs VM)
Message-ID: <1991Mar3.055657.3212@math.ucla.edu>
Date: 3 Mar 91 05:56:57 GMT
Sender: news@math.ucla.edu
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Organization: UCLA Dept. of Math, UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
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Yes, you definitely need more memory if you plan to use Mathematica
extensively. I found this out the hard way: after a day long 
session on my 8MB + 105MB Slab, M'ma was swapping extensively.
A quick check showed it had grown to over 16MB. Time to quit---but
I took it to far, trying to squeeze out one last calculation before
saving an quiting. My HD went into a thrashing mode, nothing would respond
and after a hour I went home, leaving it to thrash and hopefully
complete that final calculation via thousands of swaps.

No such luck---eventually it logged me out, and left a 40MB swapfile.
M'ma defeated the virtual memory, which of course is only as good
as your real memory. 

So, aside from the huge slowdown due to swapping, if you want
to avoid these unsightly VM failures, get some more memory. 
A total of 20MB RAM would appear sufficient for a single user
(i.e. add 4 x 4MB). Also, remember you'll need to allow
for a bigger swapfile as well on your hard disk. 

--
Barry Merriman
UCLA Dept. of Math
UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet)