somebody wrote:
> "Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
> news:49b41abe$1@news.povray.org...
> 
>> It would have been more gain had 64-bit computers not come along and
>> eliminated the need to track that manually. Now, it's probably cheaper to
>> install Win64 than it is to pay someone to code up a swap file in POV. :-)
>> The power of mass market solutions trumps per-application solutions, in
> this
>> case.
> 
> Swapping to disk is immaterial of data bus width, it all depends on how much
> physical memory you have installed.

No. It also depends on how much address space you have available to work 
with, if you're talking about OS-supported demand-paged memory.

If you're talking about what Photoshop does, basically building its own 
demand-paged addressing system on top of the application, then no, that 
makes less difference. Photoshop has that feature because it was originally 
written in the days of 8-bit and 16-bit machines, where it was normal for 
the data to exceed the address space even in usual uses. Most programs of 
the time had the same kinds of features. It's very difficult to add 
after-the-fact, especially to a program written in a language where it's 
easy to make assumptions about how memory is organized.

> so even 64 bit systems shipping today may be limited to as
> little as 6GB.

6GB of physical RAM. That's not your problem. Your problem is that you have 
only 2GB of address space. You'd run into the same limitation regardless of 
how much physical RAM or disk you have.

> On top of that, for high efficiency, automatic memory management will not
> beat application managed memory.

That's debatable. It's certainly sometimes true. Not always, tho.

> Similarly, a text/hex editor that uses the same method (of loading into
> memory) for opening a 1KB file as a 1GB file is, to put it mildly, has got
> to be written by monkeys.

Talk to RSM. I tried to use his emacs a long time ago, and the executable 
wouldn't even link into the address space of an 8086. :-) Other editors of 
the time (just as powerful) knew memory was limited and did things to handle 
it.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   My fortune cookie said, "You will soon be
   unable to read this, even at arm's length."

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