On 11/01/2011 08:08 PM, Marko Vojinovic wrote: > On Wednesday 02 November 2011 01:56:13 Linda McLeod wrote: > [snip] >> Why is there RAM..? Why can't the OS >> run its RAM off'n the hd..? > > RAM exists because I/O of a HD is waaay too slow. You can get a feeling just > how slow it can get when you open too many apps simultaneously, thus > exhausting available RAM and making the OS use the swap partition for extra > memory. It's *painfully* slow, the machine becomes practically unusable, and > it's a complete waste of cycles of today's fast processors. > > Even the I/O of RAM itself is fairly slow compared to the typical modern > processor. That's why processors now have a built-in cache (which is basically > a smaller amount of RAM on the processor chip itself), in order to speed up > execution of programs and calculations. > > You might then ask "why the processor designers don't put all RAM on the > chip?" Because it would be too big, geometrically. In order to make the > processor work on a 2GHz frequency or such, the chip surface must be small > enough to keep everything in working conditions. Otherwise you run into out- > of-sync problems, uneven heat and voltage distribution problems, and all sorts > of stuff that would make the processor fail. So the bulk of RAM must be > separated, on their own chips, and communitace with the processor via the > motherboard, which is again quite slow, due to its size and other reasons. Uhm, Marko, I think Linda was trying to be facetious. Good info from you, though. :-) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, C2 Hosting ricks@xxxxxxxx - - AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 22643734 Yahoo: origrps2 - - - - Is that a buffer overflow or are you just happy to see me? - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
