Re: largest amount of RAM cache (non ECC or ECC)

lbrtchx@xxxxxxxxx writes:
~
I was wondering about what is the largest amount of RAM a reliable
X86 motherboard (preferably a I32 one) can take.

The server motherboards I have seen with the most DIMM slots have 16
DIMM slots for registered DIMMs (in two- or four-socket Opteron
boards) or FB-DIMMs (in two-socket Xeon boards). That corresponds to
a theoretical maximum of 64GB for the Opterons and 128GB for the
Xeons, but I don't think you can buy the 8GB FB-DIMMs yet, so in
practice the Xeon machines are currently also limited to 64 GB. Look
at the homepages of Tyan, Supermicro, and Intel if you are interested
in such boards.

If you want more, I have heard of machines with larger memory capacity
offered by companies such as IBM and Sun, but they sell you the whole
box, not just a board, and I guess these boxes don't put the CPUs and
all the memory on the same board.

Concerning reliability, we are quite happy with a SuperMicro X7DBE+
board that has 12 slots filled with 2GB FB-DIMMs, but there was one
report here that Linux did not work when all 16 slots on that board
were filled with 2GB FB-DIMMs
<1172796190.606861.117960@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>.

- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed
anton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
.