16GB RAM Xserve Graphic?

[Chryx]

So there are certainly no barriers to putting 16 GBytes of RAM into an XServe G5, nor, for that matter, a PowerMac G5. Since these are SMP (Symmetric MultiProcessing, a form of "shared memory architecture") calculations of the form "each processor can address X amount of RAM, and there are two processors, so total amount of RAM can be 2*X" are flawed. I'd also like to note that whereas the G5 PowerMac takes "regular RAM", the XServe does indeed take registered (error-correcting) memory. This is, if I remember correctly, the main reason for which VirginaTech has replaced its PowerMacs with XServes. Thus availability of 2 GByte RAM modules to the "registered" variety would not preclude their installation in a G5 XServe.

For the record, Registered memory is NOT the same thing as ECC memory.
typically registered modules are ECC, but ECC doesn't inherently mean registered.

and from the specs I've looked at, the Xserve G5 does NOT take registered ram, although it does take ECC

 

[stoid]

thats what they said about 4GB of ram back when 32bit was new but a googleplexabyte is a bit overkill.

let me put it like this you work out how long it would take you to write it out taking 1 second per every didgit?

(googleplex = (10^10)^100 I think)

Close.

googolplex
: the figure 1 followed by a googol of zeroes equal to 10^googol (or 10^(10^100) )

All calculations below are subject to my own stupidity, and me trying to do large calculations at 2 in the morning.

If you had started writing zeros at a rate of one per second for the last 6 billion years, you would only be about 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000003% done.

If one character in a text file is one byte the file would be on the flavor of 9.1 * 10^87 Terabytes. Split up that file and burn it to 4.7GB DVDs, and stack them and your stack would stretch completely across the Milky Way Galaxy about 1.2 * 10^72 times and at only 10 grams per disc they would be 4.7 * 10^46 times as massive at the all the matter contained within the galaxy.

Yes, googolplex is a very large number.

 

[Schroedinger]

Thanks

Guys, I wanted to thank you. The day you can get a physicist to think "damn that guy is a geek" is a rare and special day.

 

[stoid]

Guys, I wanted to thank you. The day you can get a physicist to think "damn that guy is a geek" is a rare and special day.

Why thank you!


BTW, that percentage is really hard to understand how miniscule it is. For reference, that percentage is about a million trillionth the mass of a proton compared to all the mass of the Milky Way Galaxy!

There is no rational way to describe a googolplex. It is incomprehensibly large.

 

[gerardrj]

16GB!! I can't imagine what would 16GB RAM be used for. That's almost as much as my hard drive space: 18.62GB. Wow! Good on apple for being forward looking in ram. Makes the xServe more future proof.

There's your answer. Run from ramdisk. If you can fit all of your applications in memory, then set the hard disk to turn off, your system would be amazingly fast.
I used to run my Q900 from a ramdisk, the thing seemed like it was 2x faster than when running from HD, a lot quieter and cooler also.

 

[gerardrj]

Nonetheless one particular performance freak I know has already loaded four such modules into his dual Opteron box, thus achieving the key 16 GBytes of RAM figure.

Did he use eight modules or wind up with 8GB? Or did he use 4GB modules?. You math doesn't match.
4 DIMMs x 2GB = 8GB

 

[qubex]

I checked with him today, and I realised I had made a mistake. He has four 2 GByte modules for a total of 8 GBytes. My bad.