At 06:31 PM 1/10/2006, you wrote:
I have the same feeling Henk. My one question is, "Why not just implement a larger dynamic heap?" We are no longer in the "Everybody will only need 640k or RAM" age anymore. I will claim ignorance on how this whole process works, but I just find it odd that my older 64 MB (actually 52MB) T3 has 3 times the amount of dynamic heap as my 128 MB (100 MB) T|X. If I guess correctly, the OS addresses the first X size of memory to dynamic heap. Why didn't they just increase it on the T|X? Just a question I have always wanted to ask a Palm employee.
Because we use a 32MB RAM chip on that device, and increasing the size of the dynamic heap means we have less room in the DB cache, making database access slower. Using a larger RAM chip would add cost and also reduce battery life, as RAM has to stay powered all the time.
When you've got a 32MB budget, you've got to allocate it carefully -- some goes to DB cache, some goes to dynamic heap, some goes to storing the decompressed system ROM after it is read from NAND flash at boot time.
-- Ben Combee, Senior Software Engineer, Palm, Inc. "Combee on Palm OS" weblog: http://palmos.combee.net/ Developer Forum Archives: http://news.palmos.com/read/all_forums/ -- For information on using the PalmSource Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/forums/
