Comments on: A glimpse at the new Snow Leopard from Apple

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 02:12:02 +0000

In response to raoul’s comment that the mac is playing catch-up to windows.

That’s not true, the theoretical limit to 64-bit hardware is indeed 16Eb, however vista ultimate is currently only able to harness a maximum of 128Gb. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(VS.85).aspx

In fact if you own Vista ultimate on a 32-bit chip you will only actually get 4Gb.

Presumably Snow Leopard’s RAM capabilities will be used for supercomputers and stuff :-/.

By: Gary

Gary — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:56:18 +0000

aha! Virtual memory makes lots of sense now. Especially with terabyte storage coming to the desktop.

Thanks Raoul

By: Raoul

Raoul — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:47:06 +0000

You won’t believe it, but Microsoft has a handy explanation for this. Turns out their 64-bit OS-es also have a 16TB limit on RAM, which means OS X is now playing catchup in that arena.

The actual limit on RAM in 64-bit systems, according to Wikipedia, is 16 Exabytes (or 16.8 million Terabytes). What Apple will do with OS X is to raise its artificial limit on the amount of memory it can recognize to 16TB (still nowhere near the 16EB limit). Although one can’t put that much physical RAM in a computer, 64-bit operating systems multiply the physical RAM by virtualizing it, and you can end up with a lot more than you really have.

By: Gary

Gary — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:28:54 +0000

Hi Raoul

I also have to believe that the 16 tb limit is a typo. Are there any terrabyte ram chips to be had? Muli tb chips? Someday I suppose but what apps would need that much? Conde Nast could lay out all their magazines in November in real time with that kind of memory. Imagine app sizes? Office for the mac will come on a lot of DVD’s