Why Do Big Irons Still Exist?

Re:Why Do Big Irons Still Exist? by xresonance on Thursday November 05, 2015 @06:50PM (#10516948)

I've got 64GB, and will double it when I get the other CPU socket populated (bloody expensive Xeons!) This is because I work with giant data sets, in this case, digital video, specifically cinema-quality stuff spit out of a RED camera. I'd do the same with any other large data sets, databases, analytics, etc. RAM is inexpensive compared to the time saved by having data rapidly accessible. Even arguable for web surfing and other light desktop stuff. We can never get more time, but we can make the machines quicker and piles of RAM are a good way to do it.

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Re:Why Do Big Irons Still Exist? by ChuckMcM on Thursday November 05, 2015 @07:29PM (#10517117)

Is it ECC protected?

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Re:Why Do Big Irons Still Exist? by beachstartup on Thursday November 05, 2015 @08:45PM (#10517393)

almost certainly, if he's running xeons.

my xeon mac pro is 6 years old and it has it.

i can't imagine running that much ram without ecc. you would kernel panic or spontaneously reboot constantly. not to mention silently corrupt half your work...

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Re:Why Do Big Irons Still Exist? by danieltillett on Friday November 06, 2015 @01:52AM (#10518137)

Would you be more likely to kernel panic with more non-ecc ram? Won’t a bit flip probability be linked to the size of the critical os code size and that should be the same if you have 2 GB or 64 GB of ram?

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Re:Why Do Big Irons Still Exist? by mjevans on Friday November 06, 2015 @02:15AM (#10518186)

If nothing else, the cost savings in no longer having to actually worry about that vector of data corruption are well worth the small delta in cost.

I'm actually rather amazed that at least error /detecting/ ram isn't more common.

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Re:Why Do Big Irons Still Exist? by dgemm on Friday November 06, 2015 @03:19AM (#10518354)

I think consumer CPUs don't support it only to maintain market segmentation for server CPUs.

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Re:Why Do Big Irons Still Exist? by danieltillett on Friday November 06, 2015 @02:18AM (#10518193)

I don’t disagree - it is silent data corruption I really worry about not the odd kernel panic.

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Re:Why Do Big Irons Still Exist? by beachstartup on Friday November 06, 2015 @10:51AM (#10520060)

> Won’t a bit flip probability be linked to the size of the critical os code size

no, there are a wide range of memory conditions in which a kernel calls panic, and memory doesn't just flip single bits when it errors out, although that's certainly possible.

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Re:Why Do Big Irons Still Exist? by danieltillett on Friday November 06, 2015 @05:34PM (#10522525)

I thought that single bit flips was all that ecc memory protected against [1].

It is not flip errors per say that causes kernel panics (it is not going to cause any problems if a section of unallocated memory has a bit flip), but the probability of an uncorrected bit flip in a critical memory location. I am certainly willing to be corrected, but if don’t see how increasing the amount of non-critical memory increases the chance of a kernel panic.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory

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Re:Why Do Big Irons Still Exist? by detaro on Thursday November 05, 2015 @06:53PM (#10516968)

not the parent, but for me it's not having to think about what I run concurrently. A browser instance with many tabs, VMs running and editing large files in e.g. Photoshop and you'll easily go over 16 GB. If you regularly compile large projects or develop memory intensive apps you might want more. A few people I know were very happy about new Intel desktop CPUs supporting 64 GB instead of only 32 (and get annoyed every time they try to buy a new laptop and discover that 32 GB still is hard to get)

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Re:Why Do Big Irons Still Exist? by vinkelhake on Thursday November 05, 2015 @06:49PM (#10516946)

I've got 32GB in my three year old workstation and 16GB in my laptop. Memory is cheap, so why not?

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Re:Why Do Big Irons Still Exist? by GFK_of_xmaspast on Thursday November 05, 2015 @07:16PM (#10517076)

Firefox on linux was sucking down an incredible amount of memory to the point where I was having to restart it daily, after installing the extra ram it would tend to stabilize around 10GB. (only extension I had running was adblock)

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Re:Why Do Big Irons Still Exist? by cesarb on Thursday November 05, 2015 @07:26PM (#10517106)

If you were running adblock, you might have hit this bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=988266 ("Very high style-sets memory usage with AdBlock Plus").

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Re:Why Do Big Irons Still Exist? by eru on Thursday November 05, 2015 @07:50PM (#10517200)

Adblock is actually pretty memory hungry, if I remember right.

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Re:Why Do Big Irons Still Exist? by basmithtx on Thursday November 05, 2015 @06:52PM (#10516955)

i often find myself using a number of virtual machines at the same time.

also, chrome tabs ain't cheap.

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