Something is deeply broken in OS X memory management
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Something is deeply broken in OS X memory management
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Re: Something is deeply broken in OS X memory management
#2You can run `purge` in a terminal to free your 'inactive' ram.
I've set up a cron job to purge frequently, keeps thing humming.
Re: Something is deeply broken in OS X memory management
#3I too have noticed huge issues particularly when using photoshop or final cut pro. I figured it was the applications, but if it's the OS that's definitely a much bigger issue. I regularly restart every 2-3 hours when using those two programs heavily.
Re: Something is deeply broken in OS X memory management
#4Not this again, we already went through this a few weeks ago.
Back then, I thought the conclusion was that there is nothing broken about OS X memory management, and that with every 'fix' you come up with, you will just introduce another degenerate corner case. The same holds for any OS, trade-offs are made that may have some negative effect in some cases, to the benefit of the general cases.
I don't recognize any of his symptoms anyway, and my OS X computers get pretty RAM-heavy use, with almost always a linux VM open, XCode, Safari with ~10 tabs, iTunes with a few thousand songs, etc.
Edit: Just to be sure I read through some of the links he provides that are supposed to explain what is going on and why the fix would be of any help, but nowhere do I see any hard facts that demonstrate what is going on. Only that he 'saw in vm_stat that OS X was swapping out used memory for unused memory'. I'd like to see some actual evidence supporting this statement.
Re: Something is deeply broken in OS X memory management
#5Does anyone else notice extreme time-based slowdowns using multiple monitors? I've looked through forums and system logs and I can't find an immediate explanation for it. The system tends to hang when using multiple monitors for any extended period of time.
Re: Something is deeply broken in OS X memory management
#6No actual data, barely any technical discussion at all, mention of "the garbage collection algorithm" which most likely isn't even being used by most of the apps running, capped by a total cargo-cult solution... and this is #1 on the front page?
Re: Something is deeply broken in OS X memory management
#7I've experienced exactly the same thing that was described in this article. All the way though to installing more ram and disabling the dynamic pager (this is a late 2011 mbp).
Like the author I was shocked at how accustomed I was to waiting for an app to become responsive again. I was trained to wait on the OS to do it's business before I could do my work. Now things happen as quickly as I can think to do them, this is how computing should be.
Re: Something is deeply broken in OS X memory management
#8Not this again, we already went through this a few weeks ago. Back then, I thought the conclusion was that there is nothing broken about OS X memory management, and that with every 'fix' you come up with, you will just introduce another degenerate corner case. The same holds for any OS, trade-offs are made that may have some negative effect in some cases, to the benefit of the general cases. I don't recognize any of…
The thing is, Lion runs like crap without an SSD or insane amounts of RAM for many people. It doesn't help if it works for some, or even the majority. If anything, we need more people digging in OS X internals. I am sorry to use a tired analogy here, but Vista did work great for many too.
I have two Macs, one brand new, one migrated from SL, and 10.7 Safari was almost unusable on both until I installed SSDs. If that isn't a negative effect in every possible use case, then I don't know one. I actually guessed it was just that Lion inofficially dropped support for HDDs (by removing all caches or so).
Re: Something is deeply broken in OS X memory management
#9Not this again, we already went through this a few weeks ago. Back then, I thought the conclusion was that there is nothing broken about OS X memory management, and that with every 'fix' you come up with, you will just introduce another degenerate corner case. The same holds for any OS, trade-offs are made that may have some negative effect in some cases, to the benefit of the general cases. I don't recognize any of…
It's hard to tell for sure, but it seems like this problem may only be present if you're running certain kinds of applications. For example - if it's related to garbage collection, anything that uses ARC instead of GC isn't going to be affected.
I thought it was pretty clear that this isn't a "fix", but there's definitely something wrong here.
Re: Something is deeply broken in OS X memory management
#10Not this again, we already went through this a few weeks ago. Back then, I thought the conclusion was that there is nothing broken about OS X memory management, and that with every 'fix' you come up with, you will just introduce another degenerate corner case. The same holds for any OS, trade-offs are made that may have some negative effect in some cases, to the benefit of the general cases. I don't recognize any of…
The thing is, Lion runs like crap without an SSD or insane amounts of RAM for many people. It doesn't help if it works for some, or even the majority. If anything, we need more people digging in OS X internals. I am sorry to use a tired analogy here, but Vista did work great for many too. I have two Macs, one brand new, one migrated from SL, and 10.7 Safari was almost unusable on both until I installed SSDs. If that…
I upgraded to an SSD while on Leopard, and was amazed at the speed. Snow Leopard continued to impress. Lion slowed things down terribly (even with the SSD!), but I have good news: ever since Mountain Lion DP2, it's been fast again.