new memory record for me

[Matt Graham]

From: keith smith <klsmith2020 at yahoo.com>
> I must admit I know little about computer architecture and OSes at
> this level, however it seems multiple computers would be better than
> one big one.  What is the advantage to so much RAM in one computer?

"If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use: Two strong oxen or
1024 chickens?" --Seymour Cray

Some problems are difficult or impossible to break up into parts that can be
run in parallel.  This huge system may be working on one of those problems. 
And there's the inherent coolness factor in having as much RAM as regular
computers had disk a couple of years ago.  How fast would our DB server return
results if it could just load all ~100G of tables into RAM?  Probably 10 times
faster than it does, which is always nice.

-- 
Matt G / Dances With Crows
The Crow202 Blog:  http://crow202.org/wordpress/
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see