[TUHS] VM over-commit (and the OOM killers)

[John Levine]

It appears that Greg A. Woods <tuhs at tuhs.org> said:
>-=-=-=-=-=-
>
>At Fri, 28 Feb 2025 12:09:49 -0500, Dennis Boone <drb at msu.edu> wrote:
>Subject: [TUHS] Re: VM over-commit (and the OOM killers)
>>
>> I was told a few years ago by a smart person I respect that one of the
>> reasons Mac laptops were still so poorly endowed with RAM (iirc 8 GB
>> max) was because Apple was shipping SSD in them, ...

>That's probably mostly true, but also misguided and ignorant of the
>actual behaviour of RAM-starved systems.  I suspect it was policy based
>on memory prices at some time in the past, but seemingly hasn't been
>re-evaluated for modern workloads more recently.

Current Macbooks all start at 16GB, and the biggest Pro model can have
128GB and an 8TB SSD for the low low price of $7200.

I agree it's memory prices to make a balanced system. For a lot of
people who are not doing heavy computing 8GB is fine. If you're doing
a lot of compiling or ray-tracing, you need more computer.

R's,
John