Andreas Raab <raab at isgnw.CS.Uni-Magdeburg.De> wrote:

> 
> >   2) What is the default memory allocation then, if none is specified
> > explicitly?
> 
> 16 MB - that's an average choice between common memory sizes and the
> amount of memory you need to have fun with the system. Oh, but don't
> expect Squeak to physically use the amount of memory - we're on Windows,
> we *do* have dynamic virtual memory management ;-)=)
> 

Yeah, but doesn't Squeak cycle through all its free memory over and over as it runs?  So if you allocate 40 megs, and 10 megs of that is old, then all 30 megs of the "free" space will be cycled through periodically.  If you only have 32 megs of RAM on your machine, then that 30 megs of free won't fit and it should be paged out and in over and over and over again.  It's not just the least-common memory pages that will be paged out, because all the pages are being used.

But it's fixable!  Squeak just needs to garbage collect more often when there is a lot of free space, so that it doesn't need to get near the top of its memory allocation.  Then, the top of Squeak's memory can usufelly page out and stay out.

It would be nice, and I think it would work, but I don't know enough about how the memory management works to actually implement it....

Lex