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)

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Laurence G. Yaffe			lgy@pupthy.princeton.edu
Department of Physics			lgy@pucc.bitnet
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