more mem

[hvc123]

hey as anyone seen this

http://wardyprojects.blogspot......board.html

looks like a way to go if its gpio connect-able to the pi for those more mem hungry projects

[abishur]

An interesting idea, but if GPIO wouldn't even be fast enough for ethernet use, wouldn't it also be a pretty slow interface for memory?  I mean I see on the site it claims some impressive speeds, but I think the GPIO on the r-pi just couldn't provide the conditions for the max interface speeds.  You'd probably be better off using a usb drive for additional memory (though that, of course, has problems all of its own)

[oninoshiko]

Interesting, although it's worth noteing that's only 1/2M of memory. If you're 1/2M short, you can probibly just bum the code a little or remove some unnessicary junk form the kernel, etc.

[nick.mccloud]

This is memory down a serial port - it can't be mapped in to the processor memory map without invoking all sorts of really silly drivers for virtual memory and even then would be very very very slow.

Nice thought though.

[jamesh]

Pretty much the same effect as adding a USB HD with a swap file.

[wardyprojects]

Hi guys,

I think my memory board might be a hindrance to the R'Pi rather than an asset.

It's 4x8-bit parallel really, not serial, but yes the problem is that the CPU in the R'Pi is vastly too powerful and swift for my SRAM board to keep up with.  It was designed for microcontrollers to play nice with at much lower clock speeds.

Although I'd love the chance to try my board with a Pi at some point.  If they become available.

[jamesh]

wardyprojects said:



Although I'd love the chance to try my board with a Pi at some point.  If they become available.


Your boards or the RasPi?

(Raspi out soon!)

[wardyprojects]

Sorry, I meant the Raspi.  It seems to be taking forever, but promises to be spectacular, so that's ok.

I can't wait to get one.  Even if I probably have to wait 2 years.

[Gert van Loo]

The memory vendors away work on bigger die. I would expect there to be 512Mbytes PoP to available somewhere in 2012. Just a matter of when and how expensive.

[jamesh]

wardyprojects said:


Sorry, I meant the Raspi.  It seems to be taking forever, but promises to be spectacular, so that's ok.

I can't wait to get one.  Even if I probably have to wait 2 years.


I reckon everyone on this site and the mailing list could have one within a few months.

[plugwash]

Gert said:


The memory vendors away work on bigger die. I would expect there to be 512Mbytes PoP to available somewhere in 2012.


Hmm, are the PoP chips needed for the Pi different from those used on the panda? the panda already seems to have a 1 gigabyte PoP chip.

[jamesh]

Almost certainly. You can get higher capacity PoP for the Raspi , but they are very expensive (effectively prototypes)

[Gert van Loo]

plugwash said:


Gert said:


The memory vendors away work on bigger die. I would expect there to be 512Mbytes PoP to available somewhere in 2012.


Hmm, are the PoP chips needed for the Pi different from those used on the panda? the panda already seems to have a 1 gigabyte PoP chip.



There are various type. 1x32 bits or 2x32 and with one or two chip-selects. So if you have Pop with 2x32 bit and 2 chip selects you get 4x256Mbyte is 1 Gbyte. BM2835 has 1x32 bit SDRAM port with 1 Chip select. So you will need a single die 32-bit wide PoP.

[gregd99]

I wonder about the memory as well.

I have a PC with 4G that dual boots windows and Ubuntu. Under Ubuntu running libre office word it consumes around 500k of RAM with a standard 11.10 distribution.

At the other end of the scale I use atMega's with 16k+1K of memory.

The pi sits somewhere in the middle and is very interesting. I am thinking of using it as a light weight general purpose machine and do wonder how it will perform with libre office and firefox.

is there any info on memory usage with these sorts of apps?

[joeofloath]

gregd99 said:


I wonder about the memory as well.

I have a PC with 4G that dual boots windows and Ubuntu. Under Ubuntu running libre office word it consumes around 500k of RAM with a standard 11.10 distribution.

At the other end of the scale I use atMega's with 16k+1K of memory.

The pi sits somewhere in the middle and is very interesting. I am thinking of using it as a light weight general purpose machine and do wonder how it will perform with libre office and firefox.

is there any info on memory usage with these sorts of apps?



500k, you sure about that?

In my experience, sitting looking at the LXDE desktop uses 70-100mb of RAM (although might be less on the Pi, I've never used LXDE on ARM). Firefox is a no go, and libreoffice probably is too.

Midori and abiword/Gnumeric is realistic, though.

[Docteh]

Could probably run firefox with low amounts of ram, where you run into trouble is with opening a massive amount of tabs, if you limit how many tabs you open should have less problems. Using an ipad has got me almost used to having just nine tabs, and its browser unloads tabs whenever i feels like, so when you select that unloaded tab, it reloads the page.

Not having flash is a massive positive in regards to low memory

[gregd99]

yes it was 450M to look at the desktop and about 50M more to open libreOffice word.

as mentioned this was on a 4G machine.

what do you think makes firefox and libreoffice NOK?