Re: how to test this piece of C code

On Sat, 10 Mar 2007 04:26:23 -0600, Richard Heathfield wrote
(in article <kaOdnXSZUMAaGm_YnZ2dnUVZ8seinZ2d@xxxxxx>):

Randy Howard said:

True enough, unless you happen to be working for a platform vendor or
RAM vendor. I've had access to max-mem configs many times over the
years, most of them while working for hardware manufacturers, not pure
software shops.

Furthermore, it will become /less/ true as the years roll by.

Perhaps, but it seems like the availability of memory keeps up with the
max available on motherboards, pretty much anyway over time. When
system vendors start building boxes that will hold a TB of RAM, I'm
sure you'll be able to find it, although it won't be cheap, it'll
probably be, relatively speaking, about the same as a 64GB config is
today, perhaps less.

Nowadays, it is still unusual (but not exactly rare) for machines to
have 1GB of RAM.

Maybe. I have 2 systems on my desk here with 4GB in them, my notebook
has 2GB, and I think the lowest config still in use somewhere in the
house is 512, and it's a boat anchor.

Give it a few years, and it will become unusual (but
not exactly rare) to find a machine with /less/ than 1GB of RAM. And
4GB is only two binary orders of magnitude away.

4GB isn't a big deal today.

For comparison purposes: In 1990 (when I bit the bullet and actually
bought one of these suckers),

A youngster. :-)

my machine had 4MB of RAM (which was tons!), and 80MB of hard disk space
(which, I calculated, would last me 20 years - cough).

Okay, we can play that game, it's always fun. My first computer than I
purchased on my own had a whopping 32K in it's base config, and I
splurged and bumped it up to 64K. The single-sided hard sectored
floppies held a massive 100KB, and no hard drive was available. The
floppies were a massive upgrade over the cassette interface it sold
with normally, and I had 3 of them. Awe-inspiring, I assure you. :-)

Seventeen years on, my principal machine has 256MB
of RAM (up by six binary orders of magnitude) and 25GB of hard disk
space (up by over eleven binary orders of magnitude), and is probably
considered low-spec by many here.

Yeah, pretty much. Both primary systems (one for OS X, one for Linux
and a few brief encounters with Windows, much avoided) are dual proc,
2GHz, and with 4GB, and the main one has 750GB of disk space, but a
large chunk of that is family photos and movies.

Past results are no guide to future performance, they say - but if they
were, then in 2024 I could expect to be enjoying the benefits of a
machine with 16GB of RAM and over 50TB of disk space - and it will
/still/ be considered low-spec!

My next main system purchase will likely be a quad-proc (2xdual core)
with 8GB of RAM, and perhaps 2TB, maybe 4 of storage, or I may just
build a dedicated file server sit in the wiring closet with a giant
RAID 5 setup.

--
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
"The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those
who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw





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