However, in today's preview of the upcoming OS X Mavericks at WWDC, Apple announced a new memory management feature that brings aspects of RAM Doubler back to the Mac OS.Ĭurrently OS X establishes a memory footprint that holds contents even for programs that are currently open but not active, so as you open more programs available memory will become less and less, even if the programs are idling and not being used. This technology could effectively double the available memory for programs without needing to buy more RAM.Īs memory management in the Mac OS developed and OS X debuted, the utility of RAM Doubler fell off. To combat this, a software company called Connectix (original developers of the popular Virtual PC emulator) released a memory management tool called RAM Doubler, that compressed working memory and prevented the need for relying solely on expanding virtual memory through hard drive usage.īy compressing memory, RAM Doubler offered an intermediately performing alternative between the hard drive and true RAM, for expanding the overall RAM available to programs. High memory usage will constrain Free Memory (green), and result in the system slowing down as memory contents is stored on the hard drive. Unfortunately these features were either expensive or resulted in great slowdowns, as is often the case with virtual memory usage. Overcoming RAM restrictions required you either purchase more RAM, or enable and expand virtual memory usage in the system's control panel to make use of the hard drive as a location for RAM contents. In the mid-'90s, Mac systems came with 8MB to 32MB RAM, and as has always been the case, greater application usage required more RAM. ![]() ![]() Today at the World Wide Developer Conference keynote, Apple announced a new feature in the upcoming OS X Mavericks that is reminiscent of the RAM Doubler technology available for classic Mac systems in the '90s.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |