Can 32-bit Puppy use >3 GB of RAM? (Yes, with PAE)

[gcmartin]

Wow ..... Look!

I have now highmem and PAE compiled in. It means that 4 Gb ram is shown as that and Ice Puppy also supports ram more than 4 Gb. Side effects. It will use ram about 20 mb more than without it.
This probably will not be the last one. It is just for testing and for those who want Puppy to recognize 4 gb or more ram as it is.

Guess I'll need to stick more ram in the old P4 box.

Its found here, "32bit for ALL PCs since PentiumPro; no matter what RAM size"

Edited: @JamesBond has produced a Wary which works on all PC over last 10 years.
@Pemasu has produced a Luci (like Puppy 5.2) which works on all PCs over the last 10 years
Now its up to the others in the 32bit PUP community to take advantage of this technology "break-thru".

Let's help by testing this most current Puppy offering.
Hope this helps

[duke93535]

For us on newer hardware James Bond’s Wary makes the cut. We see no problems with it on an older backup computer, and that is 2GHz single core and lower memory (768 MB). Wary see our 6 core processor and the 4GB of memory now. We are using DSL and have no use for the older modems in the kernel.

Fatdog doesn’t make the cut because of the 64bit flashplayer (a work in progress) and no ability to use 32bit flashplayer. Fatdog also needed the xdg menus fixed by us. Kubuntu LTS 64 bit does have that ability to use 32bit flashplayer. Kirk, it seems must have not had any luck doing this
as he said he’d try a couple of times. We tried doing this, but it was over our heads. Lupu’s kernel doesn’t even see 6 cores. Notable difference in testing: The 32bit machine is using less that half the memory of the 64bit Kubuntus with about the same things install.

Computer
Processor 4x AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 945 Processor
Memory 4058MB (517MB used)
Operating System Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS

Computer
Processor 4x AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 945 Processor
Memory 4151MB (93MB used)
Operating System Puppy Linux 0.51

Here is our 6 core.

Computer
Processor 6x AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1055T Processor
Memory 4056MB (507MB used)
Operating System Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS

Computer
Processor 6x AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1055T Processor
Memory 4148MB (104MB used)
Operating System Puppy Linux 0.51

Here is backup 32bit computer.

Computer
Processor AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2400+
Memory 767MB (212MB used)
Operating System Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS

Computer
Processor AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2400+
Memory 774MB (85MB used)
Operating System Puppy Linux 0.51

Thanks, jamesbond for the modified Wary.

[p310don]

duke93535, thanks for your input. Its comments like yours that are the reason for my creating this thread.

Thanks for testing jamesbond's excellent wary modification. If you have any issues with it, please let us know.

[p310don]

Just came across this testing from Phoronix.

Ubuntu 11.04: i686 vs. i686 PAE vs. x86_64

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... ae64&num=1

With Puppies now coming with PAE and 64 bit as well as standard kernels there is much discussion of benefits / drawbacks.

Just some more info for knowledge on the topic.

[gcmartin]

@P310Don, Thanks for this.

Its what this community has already reported in a little difference way.

It should provide a guiding light to all of the 32bit distro developers.

This report adds validity in the testing done here and with @Pemasu's forward thinking approach for Puppy kernels-ISOs.

The overall community has done a lot of work to show that there is little to no drawback or impact in PAE. So, in essence, for modern day needs as memory becomes more abundant in individual platforms, there is NO NEED TO CHANGE DISTRO when anyone exceeds 3.5GB RAM in 32bit systems....None! (Assuming you started with a PAE aware distro).

64bit platforms that are shown in that report only servers to show what was proven by Intel 8 years ago (AMD as well).

Hope this helps

[gcmartin]

In the prior post, I alluded to the reports that many have shared who have tested the various 32bit PAEs available to the Puppy community.

There is one things that is "overbearing" by the majority of EVERYONE who has tested. The general consensus is that there appears to be an improved desktop performance.

When running the benchmarks as I have, I have wrestled with a reasonable way to demonstrate desktop performance comparison. I have not found a reasonable way to do this that I feel many would agree is accurate. I don't trust my senses as being an accurate measure.

Further, in my tests using the Hardinfo reporting tool and its imbedded utilities, I have found that some of the reporting tools do NOT spread across the processor pool (Cores) as I would have expected, Thus, even those measurements I, personally, don't feel is a "truly" accurate measurement of the system's performance or potential..

Further, again, in my test, those utilities do not seem to address memory saturation in a way I would like to have seen it so that I would have an even better gauge on perfomance when the system is under a high RAM load with SWAP active.

But, if we can accept the assumption that in the 32bit comparison, it uses the processor pools very similarly(ie PAE vs non-PAE), then, it can be viewed as an accurate measure.

Hope this helps

P.S. The vendors (Intel/AMD) have the measurement tools and have done this measurements already. Understanding this, in OS systems development, these Processor hardware vendors make the processor-chipset advancements available to the OS vendors with the information necessary for exploitation to the user benefits.