Computing from 1976

One thing that is starting to hurt with larger use of memory is the ability to access and load such large blocks of memory. I'm not saying that access speed haven't gone up but we are quickly reaching a wall, similar to the 4gig clock speed wall for the processors. Throwing more cache layers is of decreasing value. There are things that can be done but are not likely in the near future. Dwight ________________________________ From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> on behalf of Peter Corlett via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, December 31, 2017 5:30:21 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Computing from 1976 On Sat, Dec 30, 2017 at 05:43:34PM -0800, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: I reckon if I did a side-by-side cold boot of ye olde Amiga 1000 into Workbench to launch memacs versus firing up my Mac laptop and launching Emacs.app, there'd be not much in it. I also very rarely reboot my laptop. Close the lid, and it goes to sleep. Open the lid -- and perhaps wait 5-10s if it had been asleep for long enough that it decided to suspend-to-disk and needed to pull the memory image back in -- and it's ready to continue where I left off. There's no *need*, just like there's no *need* for computers at all. But since we have computers with multiple gigabytes of RAM, it makes little sense to restrain one's use of them to a fraction of the capabilities, except as an intellectual exercise.