Russel,
> > PS:
> > When I find myself cursing java's profligate use of memory, I remind
> > myself of the fact that most of it is GC-related, and once you accept
> > something on the order of 4x space overhead, GC typically beats explicit
> > allocation/deallocation (according "Quantifying the performance of
> > Garbage
> > Collection Vs Explicit Memory Management" by M. Hertz & E. Berger)
> > DDR3 now goes for about $12-15 / G online, so... I've re-classified
> > these feelings as emotional artifacts, for the most part. :)
>
> It's not just the cost of the memory, it is the cost of the extra
> electricity as well!
If we're talking about 5 W/G and run 24x7x365, that's roughly
43.8 KW/G. Assuming .15/kWh that's about $ 6.57 / Gig / year
of full-throttle use.
By way of comparison:
"Producing a quarter pound of hamburger requires 100 gallons of
water, 1.2 lbs. of feed grain and energy equal to a cup of gasoline,
causes the loss of 1.25 lbs. of topsoil and causes greenhouse gas
emissions equivalent to a 6-mile drive in a typical U.S. car. The
average person in the United States consumes 260 lbs. of meat per
year, most of it hamburgers." (Source: United Nations Population Fund)
That makes me think that anybody who is seriously concerned about the
environment would be far better off switching to a vegetarian diet than
skimping on RAM (I've been a veg for >20 years now).
> I come from an area of computing where if you have 16k of RAM instead of
> 4k RAM you count yourself lucky. Having 1M ROM is fun. Everything is
> though flash, generally about 1M and that brings its own hassles as it
> is neither RAM nor ROM. Enough to emulate JavaCard, but then JavaCard
> is not Java. Much like JavaScript is not Java.
Understood -- there are plenty of low-power cases as well where
the extra RAM required by GC-based VM is rather painful.
I'm just saying that if the main concern is the environment,
it makes more sense to optimize one's own diet than worry
too much about some extra RAM usage. All that said, I do find
myself sharing your gut reaction, so I suppose this letter is
partly written to myself.
Ok, this is getting pretty far removed from Gradle dev. :)
I hope the build is working again!
Cheers,
-Jon
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, please visit:
http://xircles.codehaus.org/manage_email
