Where are the Large RAM Systems? 185
CaptCanuk asks: "I've been charged with finding a system with 16 GB of memory and have had a really hard time in acquiring one (especially with a PCIE 16x slot). Linux is at the forefront of these 'large system memory' systems and beyond beta versions of Windows XP, is the only OS that supports the 64 bit memory addressing required to use this much RAM. When I asked large beige box wholesalers, I'd get comments from 'Why do you want a 16GB harddrive...you want MEMORY? are you sure?' to 'No motherboard supports more than 4GB of memory; everyone knows that'. Where are these mythical large memory systems? Do you think such workstation configurations will become pervasive in the future? Will it take Microsoft's Windows XP 64 bit to legitimize their existence in larger quantities?"
I gotta ask (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I gotta ask (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I gotta ask (Score:2)
I haven't kept up with software on render farms since I left my last design agency (now at a large software company which often contains $ i
Re:I gotta ask (Score:2)
Granted by itself it isn't the most powerful box on the hill, but since you can stack like 12 of them in the same space as a regular sized PC tower you could make up for it in massive quantities.
Re:I gotta ask (Score:2)
My industry segment means I'd probably be more likely to be working with Windows though
Re:I gotta ask (Score:2)
Re:I gotta ask (Score:2, Informative)
How about working on enormous multilayer images in Gimp that are ultimately
destined to be printed as large, high-gloss posters? That'll eat some RAM.
The piddly little images I have worked with (you know, 600dpi for 8.5x11
letter-size, tiny little things) can use up more than a gigabyte each, with
only four layers; a complex image can easily have over fifty layers...
Video editing springs to mind.
Databases perform better if they can fit all the data in RAM, especially if
t
Re:I gotta ask (Score:2)
One use (Score:3, Interesting)
If I had to model the Peoplesoft tools, well 4GB won't do that either.
Try this link (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Try this link (Score:2)
Having fun here [ioncomputer.com], I can come up with the following pretty quickly.
No problem, easily within my budget.
Re:Try this link (Score:2)
Re:Try this link (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's a question I didn't find such a good answer to in Google: Was it really necessary to be such a prick?
If you would have read past the first question mark in the guy's post, he isn't just asking for the name of one place that's selling them. He's also asking when or even whether these systems will become common. For somebody who's about to drop tens of thousands of dollars, those seem like pretty good questions.
Funny, Google isn't coming up with such good answers on that. Boy, if only he could find a community of people who make their living on the cutting edge of technology. Maybe some of them would know! Perhaps you can share the Google query that will help him find somewhere like that?
Open your eyes... (Score:5, Informative)
Dell Itanium [dell.com]
HP Itanium [hp.com]
IBM Itanium [ibm.com]
Re:Open your eyes... (Score:2)
I'd be looking at extra storage too. SAN?
Re:Open your eyes... (Score:2)
Re:Open your eyes... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hell yeah. Monster UPS underneath, to hold up the servers, switches, blah blah in the event of power outage, also the server room lights and the aircon and the security thereof so you can maintain operation or at least gracefully shut down in the event of outage. It has to be in a decent room of its own - you don't want the sound of a jet taking off in the corner of your open-plan office.
And failover? if you're gon
Re:Open your eyes... (Score:4, Informative)
Looks nicer than the ProLiant for a bit less dosh as well. I don't think any of the Big Boys have PCI-e yet, mind you. What on earth do you need it for in a server with PCI-X slots?
New Tyan Boards have PCIe & 16GB (Score:4, Informative)
Tyan just released a new series of Opteron boards that have PCIe & 16GB: They're the ones with the "E" at the end of their names [e.g. Thunder K8WE -vs- the older Thunder K8W].
Re:Open your eyes... (Score:2)
Once you pass the age of 6, you will begin to realise that minor writing mistakes are made everyday. Live with it.
3 clicks from google (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:3 clicks from google (Score:5, Insightful)
"Discuss among yourselves" (Score:2)
Well they certainly do encourage discussion. I think you could post a question about rubarb pie to Ask Slashdot at start a spirited discussion about Google and how to use it. What I wonder is, is there and question that you could "Ask Slashdot" that would encourage a discussion about something other than Google?
Hey, maybe I should Ask Slashdot that!
--MarkusQ
Re:3 clicks from google (Score:2)
I never get comments like this.
First of all, and most important, if you think that Slashdot is a "waste of time" why do you bother with it? It's pretty lame to come in here commenting and then complain that you're wasting your time. "This sucks, now I have to do this guy's research for him." Uhhh.. No, you don't have to do anything. Y
Re:3 clicks from google (Score:2)
Re:3 clicks from google (Score:2)
Re:3 clicks from google (Score:2)
Re:3 clicks from google-And then you have eggroll. (Score:2)
That's funny (Score:5, Informative)
Or, I went to AMD's page here [amd.com] and clicked on one of the manufacturers listed. Where I found this [appro.com] dual opteron supporting 16GB ram. Took me all of 2 minutes.
Appro (Score:5, Informative)
I only wish the company I work for could afford boxes like that
Oh, and there's that "need" thing I keep hearing about.
Wow. (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a few [tyan.com]
Every board there except for the single processor ones supports at least 16 GBs of memory. Many have 16x pcie slots and at least one has 2.
Wost. Ask Slashdot. Ever. (Score:2, Insightful)
Gobs of memory & Linux [sgi.com]
Gobs of memory & HP-UX [hp.com]
Gobs of memory & Solaris [sun.com]
Thousands of phamaceutical, oil and research companies around the world use this kit to get results, so why can't you?
Tyan / Opteron motherboards (Score:3, Informative)
There are quite a few motherboards that can handle 16G (or 32G) memory, they're mostly dual/quad Opteron boards. Tyan has a line.
If you also want PCIe x16, it's harder - Tyan lists this baby (Thunder K8WE) [tyan.com], but I don't know if that one is actually available already.
Why? What? (Score:2)
Next Ask Slashdot: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Next Ask Slashdot: (Score:2)
Spec sheet vs. reality (Score:3, Interesting)
So even though there have been quite a few Opteron motherboards that have 16GB support on the datasheet, vendors haven't had 2GB DIMMs to fill them out readily.
Has anyone tried a 2GB DIMM in an Apple G5 system?
Spec sheet vs. reality (Score:3, Interesting)
The 2GB DIMMs ran us around $880 each (registered ECC).
You can also get 4GB DIMMs now, but they'll run you about $2500 a pop. (yow!)
The company I'm dealing with (rackable.com) also offers a quad opteron system that has 16 slots, so you can get 16GB with 1GB DIMMs or 64GB with 4GB DIMMs (and 40 grand).
These systems are replacing a Sun V880 that previously provided our large memory support, and run the tools we have much faste
Apple XServe (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Apple XServe (Score:3, Informative)
As I said, Apple don't like to admit it and the official line is they are 'not supported' but then XServe RAID was initially 'not supported' on Windows or Linux either until people started plugging them in and finding that they worked. [alienraid.org] Now suddenly they are certified for Windows and Linux (and in fact I have two, one of which is connected to a Windows server and works jus
Plenty of 'em (Score:2)
HP Opteron, iWill (Score:2)
HP DL585 supports model 852 processors, running at 2.6GHz, 1GHz HyperTransport and PC3200, running at 400MHz. 64-32GB of RAM depending on speed.
HP [hp.com]
For a white box check out iWill (or Tyan motherboards)
iWill 8 Way Opteron supports 64 GB RAM [iwill.com.tw]
Opteron (Score:5, Informative)
Buy an SMP opteron box, they'll support all the memory you want and then some. Most of the Opteron motherboards I've seen in use have 4 memory slots per cpu socket. So for instance with a quad opteron boards you could stick 16x 4G sticks in it for 64G of ram. Incidentally, it's not that only linux supports "64-bit addressing". The memory addressability is a function of the processor and/or memory controller (which is integrated in the processor in the case of the Opteron). There is no processor I know that can actually physically address 64 bits of memory (which would require something on the order of 65,536x 256Terabyte sticks to fill). IIRC correctly, the Opteron memory controller can physically address 40 bits of physical memory, which puts the theoretical limit for it at 1TB of RAM.
Re:Opteron (Score:2)
The Department of Redundancy Department is looking for a new Director, and would like to offer you the job. Just reply with the PIN number for your primary bank card.
Which cave are you living in? (Score:2)
It's kinda scary that you're "in the business"
Windows 4GB process limit (Score:5, Informative)
The operating system (Windows Server Enterprise Edition) will work with more than 4GB memory, but a process running on that server can only address 4GB of memory, of which 2GB is reserved kernel space (in normal circumstances, not including the
Check out:
http://www.brianmadden.com/content/content.asp?
Of course there are some tricks and things you can do, but still... keep this in mind.
This is due to the fact that you are working on 32-bit hardware that can only address 4GB directly, as far as I understand. Does Linux have this limit too? Or are there other 'tricks' that the Linux kernel applies to go above 4gb? Maybe other Slashdotters can elaborate on this.
Re:Windows 4GB process limit (Score:3, Interesting)
On IA32, the limit exists on Linux as well as Windows. This is a hardware limitation of 32-bit addresses, as you pointed out. However, it's possible to "window" the higher memory into a fixed area under the 4 GB limit, similar to h
Re:Windows 4GB process limit (Score:3, Interesting)
Answers (Score:4, Interesting)
Q: Where are these mythical large memory systems?
A: They've existed for years in mainframe and scientific computing circles, just as 64 bit hardware has existed (Alpha chip, SPARCv9, MIPS) for years and OS's capable of dealing with 64 bits have existed for years.
Q: Do you think such workstation configurations will become pervasive in the future?
A: Yes.
Q: Will it take Microsoft's Windows XP 64 bit to legitimize their existence in larger quantities?
A: "Legitimize" is a word I don't like to use in the same sentence as Microsoft. But your intuition is correct. Once Microsoft brings out a reliable 64 bit OS that is backward compatible with its 32 bit offerings, you'll see more popularity and lower prices for systems with more than 4 GB of memory. Let's hope everyone's learned the Bad Way of Doing Things from the 16->32 bit Windows transition a dozen years ago. OTOH, I suspect glitches in the transition will be leveraged to encourage upgrading...
Re:Answers (Score:3, Informative)
XEON based Intel solutions have had extended RAM support for years. There's nothing new with Intel based systems having more than 4GB or ram. You just need an OS that supports the PAE extension. This boosts the memory capacity of the OS from 4GB (32bit) to 64GB (36bit). Linux and Windows have supported PAE for quite a while. (Microsoft artificially disables the ram based on the version of windows you're using)
The difference between 32bit w/PAE and 64bit is that a pro
All over the place (Score:3, Informative)
IBM xSeries 336, 346...
http://www.supermicro.com/products/mother
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/barebone
In short, every place I've checked so far.
Dude (Score:3, Funny)
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.asp
took me 23 seconds to find that... (Score:2)
...Sun [sun.com] sells this [sun.com] for relatively cheap (although those 4GB sticks are ~$2200 a piece).
I'm a bit confused -- did you only mean whitebox systems, or were you just too lazy to actually look at any of the big manufacturers?
hp xw9300 (Score:3, Informative)
It starts at around $1900, a decent price for a dual-proc workstation. It has SATA II 300, an NVIDIA chipset (NForce Professional 2200; based on NForce4) and 8 dimm slots for registered DDR.
Here is the board that has me drooling. (Score:2, Informative)
This is really simple (Score:4, Informative)
The large system there has 4 GB RAM (4 1Gig memory sticks - substitute 8 2 GB RAM sicks gets you 16 GB memory). True, these don't have PCIe - Sun won't be getting PCIe until later this year, but the IO on this system isn't to be beatten.
If you want even more memory, try the 40z and 16 2GB RAM sticks for even more memory.
Don't expect Intel systems with Dual memory controllers to get you there - you need real systems.
How about the Intel SE7520BD2 (Score:2, Informative)
Workstation? No. Server. (Score:2)
Go look at server motherboards:
http://tyan.com/products/html/opteron.html
htt
There are TONS of 16GB and 32GB motherboards on that page.
are you... (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, here is EXACTLY what you want (Score:2, Informative)
Features:
Full-Tower Workstation Chassis
Dual Intel® Xeon® Processors w/ EM64T
800MHz Front Side Bus
Up to 16GB of PC2700 DDR RAM
Two External 5.25" Optical Drive Bays
Four Internal or Hot-swappable 3.5" SATA Hard Drive Bays
One PCI-Express x16 Slot
One Gigabit LAN port on Motherboard
Reading through these replies... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you feel this is waste of time/space etc, don't waste everybody else's time and space by posting a reply. Just STFU and STFO. The man asked a question. If you're not going to answer him, keep your shit to yourself. He's not just looking for hardware from the sound of it. He wants something specific from a vendor. Googling, or searching Newegg and Dell aren't viable options. Dell.com sucks, IMHO, even the business side, because there's too much that i know they can do that they don't list. And calling them without knowing somebody there to talk to who knows his shit will only elicit the comments like the poster said "Why would you need 16GB of RAM?!"
I will grant that more information needed to be provided, such as intended use, why it has to have a 16x PCIe slot, etc. But with the abbreviated space slashdot gives each post i can see the reason for being brief.
A wisecrack is one thing, but a) most of you got modded up for things that should have been modded down as redundant. b) most of you got modded up for saying nothing prevailent or helpful concerning the original question. c) most of you just need to quit trolling posts and go do some real work.
Sun (Score:2)
No, they don't have to have anything whatsoever to do with Java if you don't want them to.
They are certified to run three families of Operating System - Linux, Solaris or Windows.
They're fast, built well and, most importantly, they have backup support that's second to none.
Depends (Score:2)
For a workstation system you may want to look at he Silicon Graphics Prism. For servers you can get systems from IBM, Sun, or HP.
Time to change careers (Score:2)
Response from Original Ask Slashdot Poster (Score:2)
Having read nearly all the responses to my original "Ask Slashdot", I've come to a couple of conclusions.
Slashdot Community:
1. Most slashdot comments are written by people who read the first line of something and jump the gun. They pull out a canned response and fire it off before reading the rest of the comment/article (RTFA is getting very common).
2. Some users just don't comprehend what they read. They are fast to point out that google has tonnes of links to major retailers and selective
Re:I'm a bit confused... (Score:5, Informative)
I'd like to throw out the possibility of clustering instead, though (mostly cause it's on my mind because I've been dealing with several support cases on clusters recently). Why is this not an option for extra power, resilience, etc..
Re:I'm a bit confused... (Score:5, Informative)
You also seem to be shopping specs rather than throughput. Your mention of 16x PCIexpress is what gives this away. The only cards that support this now are high, high end graphics cards, and these cards don't even need it. There's no real difference between the AGP 8x and PCIex versions of these cards.
That said, you're not going to find what you're looking for in the beige box world. You're looking (realistically) at about 4 different venders: Windows: Dell, IBM, and HP. UNIX: IBM, HP, and Sun.
You're also only looking at servers (not desktop or towers).
My experience is with Sun, and a little Dell and IBM. So I'm going to speak to those. Sun makes magnificient hardware. Their support organization has had problems recently, but the hardware is good enough that we don't need it often. Sun's V880 servers are amazing. up to 8 CPU's and up to 32 gigs of ram, with great growth potential (12 PCI slots, several of them 64 bit, 66 MHz).
We've had lots of problems with our Dell hradware. Whole lines of their servers have been crap, and dell replaced thier 16xx line with their 17xx line for us for free. Our exchange server runs on a 6550 IIRC, which has at least 8 gigs of ram. This model probably can go higher in ram, but I'm not sure.
We've been really impressed with the IBM hardware we've started to purchase. It's been pretty stable, fun to work with, etc. IBM has a long history of making great servers. They probably have several models that will help.
Re:I'm a bit confused... (Score:2)
As you mention that, we've had a whole string of HDD failures at work on our new Precision Workstations - not Dell directly of course - they just put the things together, but it's emblematic. Having said that, my two Dell notebooks have been pretty solid so far, aside from a(nother) broken HDD which was likely caused by rough handling. It was a good excuse for extra capacity anyway.
If you're in the Exchange area, you're actually limited to 64Gb even thou
Re:I'm a bit confused... (Score:2)
3 firewire2 ports is only 300 megabytes/s, which is less than the scsi3 360 cards, that fit happily within the bandwidth of a 64 bit, 66mhz PCI slot. It may be a PCI-X card, but I still contend that it doesn't NEED to be. I can't speak to the High Speed Color scanner. That'd probably be a pretty cool application. Though would you really need 16 Gb of ram?
[1] Now, I admit, I
Re:I'm a bit confused... (Score:2)
Re:I'm a bit confused... (Score:2)
Anyway, http://www.aberdeeninc.com/abcatg/2UServers.htm (the 64 bit one there) is a sample option. I'm not sure who you're calling, but this shouldn't be too hard to get taken care of.
Retail offering exactly what he asked for ... (Score:2)
If he can get away with only 12G of memory he can run a significantly cheaper PowerEdge SC1425.
I say significantly cheaper, but not cheap as it isn't (figure $15k with the Win2003ServerEE license on the cheap one, loaded with memory, and easily twice that for the more expensive one.)
Re:16 GB RAM (Score:2)
PS: Comes with 10 mbps ethernet and sound card (both are those new ISA cards, believe it or not). Available for a limited time only!
Re:16 GB RAM (Score:2)
I can offer a 486DX4-100 with 36MB RAM and a VESA Localbus Mach64 4MB
it's even got it's BIOS upgraded to support the 6.4 GB harddisk.
I call it the "486 on steroids" concept.
Re:16 GB RAM (Score:2)
Re:It will take time (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It will take time (Score:2)
Re:It will take time (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It will take time (Score:2)
Good point. I am blind after all.
fairly baffled by that one, though by my experience, maybe he needs 16GB+ in order to run Steam [steampowered.com] without his system taking a massive dump.
Re:It will take time (Score:4, Informative)
Really, I gotta wonder, what the hell are you running that requires that many pages to be in memory at the same time.
How about the entire genomic sequences of >4 organisms? That way you can compare them to each other simultaneously, and learn which sequences are similar and which are different.
Here's another application, off the top of my head: simulate the gravitational mechanics of any large system of objects. Think you want to swap that kind of thing to disk?
I submit that there are many scientific applications of this much RAM; and you're not likely to recognize or understand the need unless you're in the field yourself. A LOT of bleeding edge computing work is being driven by scientific researchers who demand, really, a heavy amount of resources to do their simulations on--and computing structures that are designed for database work/gaming is just not comparable.
Personally, we use HP quad Opterons, with 64GB of RAM each (running Linux, btw); and while you could build that kind of thing yourself, the reliability issues at that scale just aren't worth it.
Re:It will take time (Score:2)
The large vendor may offer you a better support than you'd get with hardware manufacturer warranties that come with the equipment, but your more likely to need that support in the first place.
Large vendors will use the cheapest piece of crap they can find that meets the specifications on the table. Beige box builders will use the best piece of equipment that meets the spe
Re:It will take time (Score:2)
Re:It will take time (Score:2)
how about uncompressed video editing? I've got an hour of vid I captured to uncompressed frames that's eating up 7 GB on my harddrive right now. I haven't even been able to compress it or chop it because my editing tool wants to load the whole thing into RAM. Even if the tool was written correctly for these really big files, I'd STILL rather load it into RAM, do all my edits at once, and then compress it down... much faster that way.
Re:It will take time (Score:3)
Three words: Computational Fluid Dynamics.
Re:It will take time (Score:2)
The latest firefox beta release.
It has a memory leak.
Re:It will take time (Score:2)
Such as Apple's OSX, their Power PC and Xserve ranges have supported 8Gb ram configurations for ages.
Re:It will take time (Score:5, Informative)
When Tiger comes out, non-gui applications will be able to address the full 64 bit address space, however, GUI apps will remain limited to the 32 bit address space. See here [apple.com] for more info.
Re:Big Memory Systems (Score:4, Informative)
The only reason linux gives you the choice between the two when compiling is to allow the address to be stores in one 32bit int.
Re:Big Memory Systems (Score:2, Informative)
On 32-bit CPUs,
Re:Big Memory Systems (Score:2)
Even so, PPro+ cannot access all of the 64 GB as a single flat memory space, only 4 GB at a time. I forget the exact reasons for this, so perhaps someone can clarify.
Re:Big Memory Systems (Score:2)
The segmentation mechanism was designed to allow the use of more memory while retaining compatibility with 16-bit, segment-naive code. It may not be beautiful but I can't think of a better way they could have implemented it.
The term "hack" is generally reserved for describing an inelegant implementation. In this case, it is the PROBLEM itself which is inelegant, not the solution to it. Segmentation was simple, easily unders
Re:Big Memory Systems (Score:2)
Re:Big Memory Systems (Score:2)
No. The idea of preserving compatibility with 16 bits apps was the hack, not the particular way they went about it. As you just said yourself, the elegant solution would be to ditch the idea of backward compatibility. Don't blame the solution when it's the problem that sucks.
Many processor architectures throughout compu
Re:Big Memory Systems (Score:2)
I wouldn't have objected to having a segmented 16-bit addressing mode even if the chip had had a true 32-bit address mode. Maybe I'm crazy but I liked it.
Re:Big Memory Systems (Score:2)
That's x86
set doesn't have a 32bit (4Gb) wall but reather an 64Gb wall due to the segment offset. This is the original hack which gave us 1Mb limit reather than the 64K.
Incorrect; 386 protected mode (which is required to run 32bit) did away with the segment offset and replaced it with 32-bit pointers to memory space. As you said, the original hack gave us a 1 MB limit. In order for Windows to access anything higher than that, you have to have a different addressing mode
Re:Big Memory Systems (Score:2)
Re:Don't buy x86/amd64 (Score:2)
UltraSparc, in particluar, offers lackluster performance (excluding some very specific applications) and is quite expensive. Power4 is also extremely pricey. Don't be ashamed to use AMD64 because it's 'only' x86+. It's a solid, high performance platform.
Re:Supermicro boards (Score:2)
Plus, for a 'vanilla' setup, the supermicro's are very price friendly. They're usually within the 400-1000 cad range with nice rack cases running around the same price range.