Subject: Re: procfs/kernfs "required"? [was Re: kernel & libkvm... ]
To: None <perry@piermont.com>
From: None <Chris_G_Demetriou@NIAGARA.NECTAR.CS.CMU.EDU>
List: current-users
Date: 01/12/1996 19:02:16
> Chris_G_Demetriou@NIAGARA.NECTAR.CS.CMU.EDU writes:
> > even if it's one page, that's one page that i'd rather have unwired
> > and available for my applications...
> 
> Oh, come now. Memory gets cheaper all the time. Its true that a lot of
> the NetBSD community is in to retrocomputing, but in a couple of years
> low end machines are going to have 32 or 64 meg of memory and another
> couple of k would be worth spending on increased productivity over
> having more unwired pages.

Just as now we require 4MB of RAM, as compared to whatever it was on
the PDP-11.

Growth of systems requires more memory, and the more memory you have,
the more of it people developing with systems will try to use.  It's
because of this that the minimum 'reasonable' "workstation"
configuration on an Alpha is 48M (for OSF/1; i'd say the same for
NetBSD), and that pages a _lot_.  (The _minimum_ DEC ships on some
systems is 32M...)


We're already _at_ the point where, on some systems, 32M and 64M are
not uncommon or are even necessary.  At what rate do we want to make
that 64M and 128M?


cgd