Re: What is the deal with 64 MB of ram?

Tonci wrote:
My first PocketPC device was iPaq 3870 with 64MB of RAM. That was in *2002*.
I had several more (iPaq 2210, 4700, Pocket Loox 560n), also with 64 MB of
RAM.
Now I am looking for a new device, and I was thinking about Asus P750, and
guess what, it has 64MB ram in *2008*!!
In 2002 my PC had 512MB, and now it has 4 GB, 8x increase. I would expect
PPC to have at least 256MB of ram today.

I know that there are more new devices with 128MB, but why is the progress
so slow? Or is that operating system limitation?

It's all about power.
It takes power to save the ram contents when the system is in standby.
Twice as much ram takes twice as much power.
Historically, there was a requirement from MS that a PDA be able
to retain its memory for 72 hours after low battery shutoff.
Turns out that that takes a major portion of the battery cpapcity.
With 128MB it takes MOST of the battery capacity to save the contents
for 72 hours. Run time approaches zero.

If you have a program that needs more than 64MB of ram to run, you probably want a real laptop to run it.

So, it was decided in some backroom that 64MB of ram was optimal.
Vendors added non-volatile FLASH for program storage. It's much more
likely that you'll want lots of programs stored but not need much ram
to run them. I'd guess the internal flash is faster than a flash
card, but that's a guess. Also, you get fewer problems when you
remove or change the flash card contents. The internal stuff is
always there.

Another advantage to this architecture is that you can turn the PDA
OFF and still retain program/data storage. When you turn it back ON,
it's like a soft reset. All the flash is still there.
I can turn my X51V off for weeks and it's still near 100% battery
capacity when I turn it back on. BIG advantage for those of us
who have more pda's than we could possibly use ;-)
--
Return address is VALID!
Bunch-O-Stuff Forsale Here:
http://mike.liveline.de/sale.html
.

Loading