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16 TB of memory

D

DrummerB

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 5, 2008
57
3
I always knew Macs were better than PCs, but this is the ultimate proof. :D

13tb.PNG


http://www.apple.com/logicstudio/specs/

Or is there any other OS out there that supports up to 16 TB of memory? :cool:
 
Yep, hardware can't support it, but the software is now future-proofed in that aspect.

No practical benefit right now to supporting that much, but no downside either, so why not?

jW
 
Mal said:
Yep, hardware can't support it, but the software is now future-proofed in that aspect.

No practical benefit right now to supporting that much, but no downside either, so why not?

jW
Click to expand...

By the time we get to using 16TB (I mean we're scraping the edge of 8GB being used at the desk now) of memory at the desktop, the processors will likely be no longer supported which means a new kernel, so none of the current apps will work. Who knows, but who even cares really?
 
belvdr said:
By the time we get to using 16TB (I mean we're scraping the edge of 8GB being used at the desk now) of memory at the desktop, the processors will likely be no longer supported which means a new kernel, so none of the current apps will work. Who knows, but who even cares really?
Click to expand...

Err, I'm pretty sure it's just a (funny) typo. :cool:
It probably should say 16 GB.
 
DrummerB said:
Err, I'm pretty sure it's just a (funny) typo. :cool:
It probably should say 16 GB.
Click to expand...

It is because of the 64 bit, which means 2^64 addresses can be accessed.
That's why 32 bit has a limit of 2^32 byte (4GB).


64 bit computers can address 16 ExaBytes (EB) in theory.

2^64/1024/1024/1024/1024/1024/1024 = 16 EB
or 1.844674407370955e+19 Bytes.


1 EB = 1048576 TB.

So the current Mac OS X version is not really up to date as it seems. ;)
 
64bit OSs can support up to 16 Exabytes of RAM. The 16TiB limit is still less than your CPU can deal with. It's not a typo.
 
Mal said:
No practical benefit right now to supporting that much, but no downside either, so why not?
Click to expand...

There is a bit of a downside. The OS memory management unit has to be able to handle all of this memory. That would mean keeping larger pointers around and other internal tables (trying to be vague here) to process all of this memory if it existed. What this means is that the MMU may not be as efficient as it could be if it has less memory to process. I'm guessing that is one of the reasons that MS has chosen to only support less memory. I am assuming that Apple did testing and found that it didn't make that much difference, so bit the bullet now and then they don't have to worry about it for a few more years (or a lot more then a few).
 
16TB is a Nehalem limit. You can have bigger images with Itanium and Opteron, as shown above.
 
Mal said:
Yep, hardware can't support it, but the software is now future-proofed in that aspect.

No practical benefit right now to supporting that much, but no downside either, so why not?

jW
Click to expand...

Probably not future proofed much if by the time 16TB becomes a reality, 10.6 would be incompatible with all the other hardware and be seriously outdated and replaced countless times
 
Apple could make a NUMA system in the near future and 16TB would be really small.
 
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