From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263567AbTD1Mzz (ORCPT ); Mon, 28 Apr 2003 08:55:55 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263568AbTD1Mzz (ORCPT ); Mon, 28 Apr 2003 08:55:55 -0400 Received: from mail.gmx.net ([213.165.65.60]:20112 "HELO mail.gmx.net") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S263567AbTD1Mzy (ORCPT ); Mon, 28 Apr 2003 08:55:54 -0400 Message-ID: <3EAD27B2.9010807@gmx.net> Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 15:08:02 +0200 From: Carl-Daniel Hailfinger User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2) Gecko/20021126 X-Accept-Language: de, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Henti Smith CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, lse-tech@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: maximum possible memory limit .. References: <20030424200524.5030a86b.bain@tcsn.co.za> In-Reply-To: <20030424200524.5030a86b.bain@tcsn.co.za> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.71.0.0 X-Enigmail-Supports: pgp-inline, pgp-mime Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org [CC:ing lse-tech because they know better than me] Henti Smith wrote: > Hi all > > I had a discussion with somebody watching the whole M$ server launch and mentioned then new systems supports up to a terabyte of ram. > I've tried looking for a hint at what the max memory support on linux is and cannot find it anywhere. > > can somebody here enlighten me on just what the maximum amount of memory linux can deal with ? Linux supports up to 4 GB (~2^32 bytes) of memory on 32-bit architectures and 64 GB (~2^36 bytes) on x86 with PAE. No other operating system can support more on 32-bit since it is a limitation of the hardware. On 64-bit systems, Linux supports up to 16 EB (~2^64 bytes) of memory, which is about 16 million times more than the 1 TB limit of MS. Current Linux 2.4 allows 32 CPUs for 32-bit arches and 64 CPUs on 64-bit arches. However, this limit is (was?) being removed in 2.5, so you can have up to 32767 CPUs, which should be enough for you right now. (Note: I said _right now_, lest anybody make jokes about 640K limit) Regards, Carl-Daniel -- http://www.hailfinger.org/