Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Thu, 12 Oct 2000 19:13:27 +0100 (BST) | From | Tigran Aivazian <> | Subject | Re: large memory support for x86 |
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On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, Kiril Vidimce wrote:
> > Hi there, > > I am trying to find out more information on large memory support (> 4 GB) > for Linux IA32. Is there a document that elaborates on what is supported > and what isn't and how this scheme actually works in the kernel? > > My primary concern is whether a process can allocate more than 4 GB of > memory, rather than just be able to use more than 4 GB of physical > memory in the system. > > Also, I see that the highmem support is just an option in the kernel. > Does this mean that there is a significant performance penalty in using > this extension?
Linux does support 64G of physical memory. My machine has 6G RAM and runs absolutely nice and smooth as it should. Everything "just works" (ok, not counting a few subtle cache-related issues and stability of PCI subsystem but those happened many hours ago and were quickly fixed so they are history now and therefore long forgotten ;).
As for PAE, yes it does incur penalty of about 3-6% of performance "overall". By overall performance I meant the unixbench numbers. I have published the numbers comparing PAE/4G/nohighmem kernels on the same machine sometime ago...
So, it only makes sense to enable PAE if you have more than 4G of memory.
Regards, Tigran
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