On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 07:14:43PM -0700, Daniel Burrows <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> was heard to say: > The good news is that if you have a 64-bit processor, the > amount of memory you can install is limited only by the amount your > motherboard can recognize. Also, memory is super-cheap nowadays. So > if you have 8 virtual machines and you want each to have access to a > gigabyte of memory, throw 8GB in on top of what the host system needs > and you should be good.
Just to pedantically correct myself: Of course, even with a 64-bit processor, there is a limit to how much memory you can address. Specifically, just as the hard limit for a 32-bit processor is 2**32, the hard limit for a 64-bit processor is 2**64. But that's approximately 2**34 gigabytes, and the lowest price-per-gigabyte that I can find for RAM chips is about $20. So to max out a 64-bit memory space, you would need to spend around $343,597,383,680 , or about $350 billion dollars. And before you even got there you'd have to worry about chips failing, heat dissipation issues, cosmic rays, etc etc. Not to mention that I doubt any current motherboards accept anywhere near that much RAM. So you don't need to worry about this any time in the foreseeable future. :-) Daniel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]