Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!udel!princeton!phoenix!pupthy2!lgy From: lgy@pupthy2.PRINCETON.EDU (Larry Yaffe) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Today's dumb question... Summary: Memory is ALWAYS expensive! Message-ID: <2847@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> Date: 10 May 88 22:54:48 GMT References: <503@xios.XIOS.UUCP> <2676@pdn.UUCP> <674@cernvax.UUCP> Sender: news@phoenix.Princeton.EDU Reply-To: lgy@pupthy2.PRINCETON.EDU (Larry Yaffe) Organization: Physics Dept, Princeton Univ Lines: 31 In article <674@cernvax.UUCP> hjm@cernvax.UUCP (Hubert Matthews) writes: [[ much stuff about "simple" machines deleted" ]] > - virtual memory is useful only when an application won't fit in > physical memory. But memory is cheap, so with lots of Mbytes > who needs it, especially if the program is written well. I find this claim completely bogus. Especially when discussing future architectures for high performance machines (a major topic of this newsgroup). Real, worthwhile, uses of more memory than you will ever be able to afford exist in many, many areas. My view is that "memory is ALWAYS expensive". The price in $/Mb is completely irrelevant, since cheaper memory simply increases the range of interesting problems which become practical to persue. I would include this statement as one of the "laws" of computer science. Certainly, when designing new machines/software/languages, I would argue that the goal should always be to accomodate applications larger than than are practical today. (For this reason, I find "dataflow" languages hopeless - they waste too much memory.) > Hubert Matthews (software junkie, surprisingly enough) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Laurence G. Yaffe lgy@pupthy.princeton.edu Department of Physics lgy@pucc.bitnet Princeton University ...!princeton!pupthy!lgy PO Box 708, Princeton NJ 08544 609-452-4371 or -4400