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Date:      Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:34:54 +0100
From:      Ivan Voras <ivoras@freebsd.org>
To:        freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Dual Core Xeon /  i386 install w/ more than 4gb of RAM
Message-ID:  <fphkml$m2m$1@ger.gmane.org>
In-Reply-To: <4594886.5961203490569242.JavaMail.root@ly.sdf.com>
References:  <20080220035752.GR99258@elvis.mu.org> <4594886.5961203490569242.JavaMail.root@ly.sdf.com>

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Tom Samplonius wrote:

>   Is PAE really that stable?  I thought it was fairly unpolished, mainl=
y because PAE is seen as a weak kludge implemented by Intel because they =
all thought we would all be using Itanium's by now.  Intel reversed their=
 folly pretty quickly, adopted the x86-64 extensions as-is from AMD, and =
pushed them onto every piece of silicon they make.

Architecturally, it's a nasty kludge. As far as stability on FreeBSD is
concerned, my only machine under PAE with 4 GB RAM (without PAE it would
use a bit over 3 GB) is very solid on 6-STABLE.

>   I also really don't know how anyone would properly use 16GB of RAM un=
der PAE anyways?  Each process is going to limited to just under 4GB.  Th=
e kernel memory space can't be bigger than 4GB either, so forget about a =
huge disk cache.

As I understand it, one possible benefit could be to use the memory for
disk / file cache. AFAIK the pages are just pages, without distinction
where they are mapped, and for example, if you run PostgreSQL, it
couldn't use more than 4 GB for its own data (actually closer to 2 GB
because of some sysvshm issues) but it will indirectly use the cache.

>   And is there some really stability fear about FreeBSD on x86-64?  See=
ms just the same as i386.

I agree, FreeBSD on amd64 is very stable.


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