Memory upgrade?

[Oddball]

Having only 256MB RAM, in my opinion, makes PS3 useless as a serious Linux workstation. Is it possible to do upgrade to more memory and what's the upper limit?

[kojima1]

PS3 has 512MB, not 256. Lack of GPU access in Linux is more of an obstacle than RAM.

[Oddball]

Yes, the total amount om memory is 512 MB but it's 256MB XDR RAM and 256MB GDDR3 VRAM. I beleive the second set of memory is dedicated and restricted to the GPU.

In any case; If you're a game junkie looking for yet another fix I agree that the lack proper support for the graphics sub-system is a bigger problem than the lack of memory. But if you're a dry scientific dude in search for some raw number-crunching and with an explicit interest in parallel computation you don't really care about that. Then the lack of substantiell memory, say at least 4 GB, is a far more serious issue. Guess I'll have to wait for cell-based blade-servers from IBM instead of this toy! :-/

[MagikRevolver]

Originally Posted by Oddball Having only 256MB RAM, in my opinion, makes PS3 useless as a serious Linux workstation. Is it possible to do upgrade to more memory and what's the upper limit?

It's possible, but not in the least bit practical. You'd have to do hardware modification, as well as software modification. The ps3 os is not meant to recognize more ram than what $ony put in the console. Adding extra ram isn't gonna do much for you.

[mikeg]

Sadly this is why it is kinda useless with modern day desktop OS's. But, make my PS3 an XBMC with HD and its game over.

[turulo]

I can understand 256 ram isn't the best from the PS3, anyway its usable when you take some care about how you use the system.

Currently i use a toshiba portege 3480CT as work laptop running Debian, it only contains 192 mb and i can assure you its perfectly usable.

Some tips to save ram:
- Dont use gnome or KDE, it takes too much ram.
- Use light window managers such as E16, E17, wmaker, blackbox, etc..
- Dont open too many windows
- Export filesytems and applications from other computers.
- Run cpu intesive processes into other LAN boxes.

For example, if you work under UNIX environments, you can run X programs from other boxes exporting DISPLAY to PS3, that way cpu and ram from the remote box will be used, and ps3 will only manage to display the X11 app.

If you are running a windows environment, you can use rdesktop to control your windows box from PS3, also if you use any of the windows server edition, you will be able to run windows apps into your PS3 in windowed mode (standalone) instead of full remote desktop control, saving ram and cpu from your console.

At last, absence of free ram on a running system, would cause saturation probably ending on system crash. To avoid this, Operating Systems use virtual memory since long time ago.

Under UNIX systems you can add swap to extend "virtual memory" this way, when the system needs more ram, it pages currently unused ram into the swap, and pages it out to ram again when needed. This is a good workaround to avoid system crash, but it may cause performance degradation, as usually hard drive is used for swap, and HD uses to be already overloaded when ram usages increases.

So to get some more ram, the easiest way, would be adding some swap, anyway new swap should be placed on fast devices to avoid impact into system performance.

Adding swap devices tips:
- Try to avoid using system HD as swap if you have any other free device.
- Use as faster devices as you can.
- Try to use devices in parallel.

Windows Vista offers a new feature which was already present on UNIX systems probably since its born. Under windows its called ReadyBoost, which allows the user to add usb stick devices as virtual memory. While under UNIX you can use any device or even file inside a file system as virtual ram.

As windows ReadyBoost advises, using low cost flash rams will end on horrible performance, so you are warned. Under unix, best of all would be using 3 or 4 fast flash ram devices, as swap using same priority. This way all the devices would be used balancing between them using a basic round robin algorithm, this way you could get a theoretically swap speed of (flash device speed * number of devices.).

You can specify swap priority using -p at swapon command, or using option pri=[number] at fstab file.

Example box using swap with same priority:

[ (weed@TuRuLo) | 17:06:32 ] |_ ~$ cat /proc/swaps Filename Type Size Used Priority /dev/sdb2 partition 781304 342532 1 /dev/hda1 partition 979924 342380 1

This way when paging ram to swap, it will send first page to sdb2, and while page its still being dumped to sdb2, second page will start to be dumped onto hda1.

I haven't managed to get multiple high speed devices free to use with my ps3, so currently im using a 512 mb Sandisk memory stick device as swap with higher priority (dedicated for swaping), and HD as second one (shared with system).

Ps3 ~ # cat /proc/swaps Filename Type Size Used Priority /dev/sda1 partition 979924 0 1 /dev/sdc partition 480248 261916 2

[hacked2123]

I haven't managed to get multiple high speed devices free to use with my ps3, so currently im using a 512 mb Sandisk memory stick device as swap with higher priority (dedicated for swaping), and HD as second one (shared with system).

That's Beautiful! Something like that could work wonders when we start developing homebrew, RAM intensive apps.

[DjSmooth0918]

Thanks Guys, I just got into Console Gaming, and the first thing I wanted to do was up the memory, but now I see it would be useless. Now my next step is to upgrade this hard drive. I will be replacing the 80 gb with a 500 gb next weekend...

[pstrzy]

I dream about such a version of Linux for PS3, which I could use mmediately without using the mouse or keyboard, which does not have to set up, etc. But that's only a dream ...