Free RAM on custom ROMs: Can more be freed?

[sherpa]

Let me start by saying "Thank you to all the custom ROM chefs!" :)

I could not find anything relevant so I have to ask this question. In the old Hermes/TyTN/8525 days, we saw custom ROMs with about 30-31MB of free RAM on cold startup. As per Hermes' specification, the device has 64MB total RAM. Given this, custom ROMs only used about 33-34MB of RAM.

Now, on the other hand, Kaiser/TyTN II/Tilt has a total of 128MB RAM. The highest free RAM I have seen on a custom ROM is around 73MB. This means that the Kaiser is already using around 55MB of RAM on cold startup.

My question is, why is the memory usage so high on Kaiser compared to Hermes? They both are running WM6 with basic startup processes, right? Or am I wrong about this?

[PhilipL]

Hi

The point of RAM is for it to be used. It is unlikely you could sensibly use up 73Mbyte, so why the worry?

The OS is simply taking advantage of the extra space to pre-load and cache programs. If you force the OS to use a tiny amount of memory, then essentially you have just lost one of the advantages for having more in the first place. A bit like knocking down a partition in your house for extra space, but then squashing into a corner and leaving all the space empty. :)

Regards

Phil

[sherpa]

Hi

The point of RAM is for it to be used. It is unlikely you could sensibly use up 73Mbyte, so why the worry?

The OS is simply taking advantage of the extra space to pre-load and cache programs. If you force the OS to use a tiny amount of memory, then essentially you have just lost one of the advantages for having more in the first place. A bit like knocking down a partition in your house for extra space, but then squashing into a corner and leaving all the space empty. :)

Regards

Phil

LOL! I like your analogy. I guess you are right regarding the point that I could never use all of 73MB of RAM and I guess it makes sense that the OS is simply caching programs but what more could it be caching that requires almost 22MB more than Hermes? I understand that Kaiser has more going on but, in Windows Mobile world, 22MB more is a huge amount.

[cuboosh]

just liek windows pc.. more memory u have the more that is used on cold boot.

[kyphur]

One irony here is that I've actually seen the amount of free RAM decrease after removing some applications.

For example with XDA Live 1.2 I removed MMS and figured that I'd have a little more RAM but it actually has over 1MB less free ram on boot. I'd bet it has something to do with WM fitting cached stuff into a virtual box and maybe without the MMS chunk there is could get a couple of small things in so the fit is tighter now.

No big deal, it's there to use right?