Shared Memory

Anton Markov anton-F0u+EriZ6ihBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org
Fri Jan 28 18:28:28 UTC 2005


John Wildberger wrote:
> I am in the market for a new computer and would like to sort out some of the 
> advertising hype. 
> What does "shared dual channel DDR2 SDRAM" imply?
> -shared-: 
> Is this a HW or SW feature? Does it share memory with a graphic card or does 
> it share it between running processes?
See the other posts.

> -dual channel-:
> Is this a feature of the memory or how the memory is used by the mobo to 
> achieve an effective 800MB  data channel using a 400MB rated memory?
It is a feature of the motherboard. When you put in two _identical_ 
sticks of RAM into two corresponding slots (as per the motherboard's 
manual), then the RAM controller will write to them in parallel (sort of 
like a RAID-1 for RAM). That way you get double the bandwidth, like you 
  said (although I don't think your numbers are correct).

> -DDR2-:
> What is to be gained by using DDR2 versus DDR ?
Twice the memory bandwidth, or at least higher bandwidth. This is in 
addition to dual channel RAM.

> I see more and more SATA drives being part of packaged computers. What are the 
> pro's and con's for them? Are they more difficult to get installed with 
> Linux?
I don't personally own one (yet), but I heard they work well with Linux. 
What really matters is that Linux supports your SATA controller; the 
drives are all standard (like old ATA). I think anything from Intel or 
VIA should be supported, but I would do a google search for "linux SATA 
support" to be sure. You may run into problems with the so-called 
"hardware" RAID support, but in that case you can just use Linux's 
software RAID.

As far as the drives themselves go, they give you higher throughput and 
(possible) seek time. I don't know if there are any real cons.

-- 
Anton Markov <("anton" + "@" + "truxtar" + "." + "com")>

GnuPG Key fingerprint =
5546 A6E2 1FFB 9BB8 15C3  CE34 46B7 8D93 3AD1 44B4

*** LINUX - MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU! ***
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