[rescue] SGI tidbits

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Sat, 28 Sep 2002 vraptor at employees.org wrote:

> 1) If you are doing non-graphic work with your SGI, don't bother
> going over 192MB of memory.

If you're just doing desktopy things, sure.  However, Postgresql and a
couple of Emacs sessions can chew up lots of memory, too.  And let's not
forget that a single session of Mozilla munches 80MB on a TrueColor
display.

> 2) If you are working with Maya and texture maps, the O2 and
> the Onyx (memory is hazy on the 2nd--I remember the O2 because
> I have one) are the only ones that will handle in excess of 1GB
> texture maps.

It would be Onyx2 or Onyx with IR.  They have -gobs- of texture memory.
O2 has UMA, so any system memory that you have available can be used as
framebuffer or texture memory.  I wish they'd have put UMA on a XIO
machine--that seems like it could easily give you the best of both
worlds.

> I learned this when asking about how much I should boost the
> O2's memory, since it only has 160MB.  Apparently the OS loads
> itself up and pretty much stays there.  I guess they took a
> dim view of swapping with IRIX.

I can attest to that.  The memory management on this OS -rules-.  I
wrote the IRIX port of wmmemmon, which is a WindowMaker docklet that
tells you how much of your memory and swap are used.  Even with loading
multiple XEmacs sessions, multiple copies of Mozilla and gimp and
everything else I could think of, I couldn't get this 512MB machine to
swap; the shared-object manager is just that efficient.  I finally had
to write a program that artificially allocated and filled memory, just
so I could test that my readings were correct.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke
   > Can you SysAdmins tell me what might go on in a typical day?
   Hours of endless frustration punctuated by moments of sheer terror.
                                 --Saul Tannenbaum (in the Monastery)