[net.news] nuking newsgroups

ags@pucc-i (Seaman) (06/18/84)

>  ... you probably don't remember the story a few years back in a trade
>  journal explaining how someplace had figured out a clever way to get around
>  the 16-MEGAbyte address-space limitation per process that exists on a 370.
>  That's right - someone not only blew out the top end of 16 Mb in one
>  process; it hurt enough that they "solved" the problem.
>  [Please don't bother to write to tell me that the 370 is most of the
>  problem.  You can divide the memory size by 2 or 4 and it's still absurd.]

Is there something wrong with running tasks in a virtual space larger than
16Mb?  We run many such jobs on our CDC CYBER 205 every day.
-- 

Dave Seaman			"My hovercraft is full of eels."
..!pur-ee!pucc-i:ags

rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn) (06/22/84)

It's a little amazing to me that we're playing this game of "everybody has
a VAX or 68000; why worry about 11's?"  Does anyone realize that DEC has
turned out a high-end 11-on-a-chip (or two or three) within the last year?
That's point #1 - it ain't dead yet, by a long shot.

Point #2:
>	So what ? Given any amount of memory, there will always be a
>	programmer out there to fill it up with an application that
>	used to run on half as much memory before, without any significant
>	improvements over anything. (Oh sure ! space vs. speed trade-off -
>	only if you knew what needs to run faster !!!)

This was well-put, and it goes for ANY address space.  If you don't believe
it, you probably don't remember the story a few years back in a trade
journal explaining how someplace had figured out a clever way to get around
the 16-MEGAbyte address-space limitation per process that exists on a 370.
That's right - someone not only blew out the top end of 16 Mb in one
process; it hurt enough that they "solved" the problem.
[Please don't bother to write to tell me that the 370 is most of the
problem.  You can divide the memory size by 2 or 4 and it's still absurd.]
-- 
Dick Dunn	{hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd		(303)444-5710 x3086
	...Cerebus for dictator!

davecl@mako.UUCP (Dave Clemans) (06/24/84)

A lot of this discussion is getting off the point.

What is important is that the "official" USENET protocol not require
such things as megabytes of paged virtual memory, and that implementations
of that protocol exist to demonstrate that fact.

If other implementations exist that do use some of the special features
of the local environment (say to experiment with different/better user
interfaces) well and good.

There's two sort of "cliche" points that can illustrate this point.

	I don't care what editor you use as long as the files it writes
	can be used by my editor (and vice-versa).

	I don't care what mail interface, transmission and receiving systems
	are used by you as long as they don't do something that interfers
	with mine (and vice-versa).

dgc

thomas@utah-gr.UUCP (Spencer W. Thomas) (06/24/84)

(This isn't really the right place for this, but it started here.)

I can easily see blowing the top off of a 16Mbyte address space.  Some
friends of mine are running programs that need at least 24 Mbytes to run
(almost all data), and may be over that by now, I haven't talked to them
recently.  This isn't to say that that number might be reduced if they
HAD to, but it's not worth the effort for them.

=Spencer