Re: How much RAM can debian support?

[Mark Allums <mark@allums.com>]

Micha Feigin wrote:
> On Sat, 10 Oct 2009 10:51:40 +0100
> Kelly Harding <kelly.harding@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 2009/10/9 Dean Chester <dean.g.chester@googlemail.com>:
> > > Hi
> > > I'm moving to a Macbook soon(staying with debian tho:p) and apple keep
> > > advertising that snow leopard can support 16 exobytes of RAM. Im just
> > > wondering how much can 64-bit debian support?
> > > Thanks in advance
> > > Dean
> > In theory at least Debian will support the limits of the kernel
> > version it uses. So it is a bit subjective really.
> >
> > IIRC, only the latest X58 chipsets (for desktop consumer PCs) support
> > upto either 16Gb or 32Gb of RAM (forget which),
> > and the P3x chipsets only support upto 8Gb, with the P45 supporting
> > upto 16Gb. IIRC Intel laptop chipsets are derived from
> > their desktop counterparts to some extent.
>
> I've seen machines going to the area of 160GB, not regular consumer ones though
> Nehalem usually has 6 slots (3 channels, 2 slots per channel) and if you put in
> 8gb sticks you can go up to 48gb on a run of the mill board


That would be cool, but I doubt any "run-of-the-mill" boards will 
support 48GB, for at least two reasons:

1. lack of BIOS support for 48GB
2. insufficient power support on current boards for 8GB mem sticks

and possibly

3. Buggy or non-existent BIOS support for ecc

This applies to mainstream boards.  Better server and workstation boards 
will support 48GB, but not with X58 chipset.  It would need a server 
chipset and maybe a Xeon CPU.



MArk Allums