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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: Reasons For Large Main Memories
Message-ID: <7093@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 6-Sep-86 21:42:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.7093
Posted: Sat Sep  6 21:42:33 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Sep-86 21:42:33 EDT
References: <8494@duke.duke.UUCP> <147@eneevax.UUCP>, <8511@duke.duke.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 15

> ...many Lisp systems are single user systems.
> Having even a couple of hundred megawords of memory could totally eliminate
> paging, as the entire system could be resident...

Well, today it could be.  Two years from now, in the Lisp community, who
knows?  If you drop the ability to do virtual memory, then there is an
awfully sharp cost jump when a program goes from 200MW of memory to 200M+1W.
All of a sudden none of those 200MW machines can run it any more.

There is a lot to be said for memory-rich systems, particularly for Lisp
applications, but discarding virtual memory is throwing out the baby with
the bathwater.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry