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by nateb2022·3y ago·view on hn ↗
No, the time for 32GB of RAM has not finally come. While AAA games at higher settings, machine learning, data science, and kernel development may require at least 16 GB, and preferably more, consumer devices have traditionally been on the lower end of the scale, with the majority of new devices currently being sold coming with 16GB or less of RAM.

Current budget laptops (<$300) still have 4GB of RAM. Most mid range laptops come with 8GB standard, with more memory optional. I would say 8GB is the current overall average among new devices, and with the many many older devices still being used, I'm guessing that of all the devices in America currently being used, the average is ~6GB of RAM.

8 GB is more than enough for the majority of people. Combined with the advent of modern SSDs which enable high-speed IO at unprecedented rates, and widespread use of swap, it is hard to think of a case where regular consumers (who make up the majority of the market) would need more than 8GB (or even 16GB, to be generous) in the next 10 years.

I would be very, very surprised if the random guy using just a browser, no matter how many tabs were open, found a way to exhaust 8GB of RAM, when combined with the speed and flexibility of modern SSD-based swap. Modern browsers are efficient with memory usage, and tabs that aren't in view can be offloaded to swap whence they can be quickly retrieved. Business/commercial users, who typically have Word/Excel/Edge/Teams/Chrome running at the same time, would benefit from 16GB of RAM but again, 8GB would be usable and anything more than 16GB would have marginal benefits, if any.

2 comments
> 8 GB is more than enough for the majority of people.

I have 8 GB RAM (with no swap) and just using browser with few tabs and several times a week system get out of memory (due to Firefox eating most of it), ending with either system thrashing or kswapd running . If Linux memory management have worked correctly it would just kill firefox, but unfortunately it does not, so i have to kill it manually in mostly unusable system (due to thrashing). For a period of time, i ran Firefox in memory control group (restricting it to 4 GB), which helped that thrashing was limited to Firefox and not affected the rest of the OS. Several people around me reported the same problem (although less often).

> Combined with the advent of modern SSDs

I do not think it is a good idea to use swap on SSDs due to limited number of writes. A year ago i replaced perfectly working SSD just because SMART reported that average write count exceeded nominal lifespan and allegedly most SSDs fail between 100%-200% of lifespan (in average write cycles). And modern SSD have even lower number of write cycles (although higher capacity, so writes are better distributed).

True, OOM issues can occur when swap is disabled, but most consumers don't disable swap.

Regarding SSD lifespan, case-by-case analysis has shown that SSDs are both more reliable than HDDs, as well as capable of more TBW per lifespan. SSDs are better than HDDs in almost every way. With average SSD TBW capacity of between 60 and 150 terabytes written, and an average of 10GB written per day (which is on the high side), an SSD can be expected to last between 16 and 41 years, which is longer than the average usability lifespan on a computer.

Regarding your experience, I can't make an objective analysis however from the fact that you're running Linux and that you wrote to disk more than the nominal lifespan, I'm guessing that you probably were doing some IO-intensive things that normal consumers wouldn't do.

> Regarding your experience, I can't make an objective analysis however from the fact that you're running Linux and that you wrote to disk more than the nominal lifespan, I'm guessing that you probably were doing some IO-intensive things that normal consumers wouldn't do.

1. Low-end SSDs starts at 40 TBW

2. Overwrites are counted for internal writes, not OS-level writes. In my case SMART reported 2-3x higher number of internal writes than OS-level writes (probably due to strained wear-leveling algorithm when the SSD was used mostly full).

3. I would consider my case as low-intensity workload (basic desktop usage), but 10 GB/day seems like too low. Just watching a movie is 2 GB write, if one download it first instead of watching stream. But let say it is 10 GB/day.

40000/(10×2.5×365) = 4.38 years, I think my SSD was 6 years old.

But all this is irrelevant, as the original argument about swap on SSD is not about regular usage of SSD, it is about writes triggered by swapping, esp. thrashing during near-OOM situation.

>I would be very, very surprised if the random guy using just a browser, no matter how many tabs were open, found a way to exhaust 8GB of RAM

LOL, that hilarious! I am an unashamed tab hoarder using Firefox, and regularly go over 24Gb just for Firefox.

I find it will still run but won't scroll smoothly or switch between tabs instantly when I go over ~150 windows (each with at least 20-40 tabs).

Yes, I have a problem. No, I don't care.

I can search tabs by typing "% keyword" in the URL bar.

Why should I ever need to close something I'm not finished with?

The PC has 64Gb RAM though, because I often run VMs as well.

Where more RAM is available, computers will keep more in RAM. If you remove your RAM leaving 8GB behind, you will find that in cases of limited RAM availability, your browser will most likely offload the "hot" frequently-used-tabs to swap, and data from your other tabs will be discarded, with the page being reloaded when it is switched back to. The margin after which tabs are dropped, so to speak, varies and can differ on different systems.

As I think you have found out, regardless of your RAM, having a lot of tabs open probably won't end up being a smooth experience. However, I think you'd be surprised to find that given less RAM (~8-16GB) your system will probably perform similarly. While it may be necessary for you to have that many tabs open to complete your workflow, most consumers don't need that, and would be able to get by without having to resort to thousands of tabs.

Given a bigger budget, you made the choice to buy more RAM, which is great and I'm sure your system thanks you everyday for it. However, I don't believe that the majority of consumers need to make that investment, or wish to spend the extra money for RAM which they probably won't make full use of.