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AE7 Maximum RAM under OSX?
One thing that seems to be changed from 6.5 to 7 is the 2GB ram limit has finally been lifted. My machine has 3GB and AE 7 seems to be able to use it all, is there a new limit or is it sky’s the limit and fill it with as much as the budget stretches and watch AE fly.
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9 Replies
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AE is a 32 bit app and will never use more than 3 GB. It’s simple computational mathematics. It could only use more than that if it were fully 64 bit native, but that hasn’t happened so far. So there is no point in spending on more RAM just for AE.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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Minor bit of pedantia – Nucleo or Nucleo Pro on OS X can consume up to 21GB of RAM on a Quad G5. Therefore, the only clarification is a single instance of AE can use up to 3.5 GB on OS X. This 3.5GB is “per” instance. On a Quad – Nucleo uses 5 additional instances of AE.
Steve
GridIron Software Inc. -
[Steve Forde] “On a Quad – Nucleo uses 5 additional instances of AE.”
So you open AE once, and Nucleo uses other instances in the background without explicitly opening them?
So Nucleo software does the old multi-instance-sequence-render trick in the background, but also with previews and movie renders?
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Essentially – yes. Obviously adding movie support and previews is a key differentiator, but the primary other things are managing AE’s RAM usage and how it writes to the disk.
As an example, if you started 4 instances of AE on a Quad, and got them to render a multi-machine sequence of a project using the manual multi-instance trick. What would happen is that all 4 instances would be trying to eat as much of your RAM as possible, irrespective of the other instances that are also trying to grab RAM. Even more importantly, you would have 4 instances also trying to simultaneously write files to the disk.
When a system runs out of RAM – you get a problem called swap space hell. It means your instances have no physical RAM left, and are asking the OS to use the disk in a virtual RAM capacity. This will drop your CPU utilization to about 4-8%.
When a system is writing too many things to disk at the same time, the hard drive has trouble keeping up (see swap space hell), and the system grinds to a halt. (Thats why fast disks are really important, and why RAID arrays work- a RAID reduces the impact of simultaneous reads / writes on a single hard drive)
These two issues are the primary barriers to the old multi-instance trick providing maximum performance. Not saying the there isn’t going to be a gain with the multi-instance trick, just that it could be alot better. (plus no movies and previews…;)
Nucleo doesn’t actually render anything, its still AE doing the work. Nucleo is really just a software management umbrella over top of AE, that tells it what to render and when, and also constrains how it writes to the disk, when it accesses CPU and what RAM it can access. Users also get the integration with previews and movies as a result of this.
Nucleo Pro also is a management umbrella – just more focused on controlling the foreground AE instance (the instance of AE that you use), and creates more features for accessing your “farm” of CPU’s in the background. (Speculative Previews, Speculative Renders, Commit to Disk and Background Render Queue)
In short – we treat your workstation like a render farm. (the fact that you can buy 4, 8 and 16 CPU workstations now also helps…;)
Steve
GridIron Software Inc. -
That makes perfect sense. Boy, you guys are clever. 🙂
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[Steve Forde] “Minor bit of pedantia – Nucleo or Nucleo Pro on OS X can consume up to 21GB of RAM on a Quad G5. Therefore, the only clarification is a single instance of AE can use up to 3.5 GB on OS X. This 3.5GB is “per” instance. On a Quad – Nucleo uses 5 additional instances of AE”
Goodness! Anybody have a spanking new Quad G5 to give away for free (along with Mac versions of my tools perhaps so I don’t need to crossgrade)? *lol* It’s great to get those insights from someone who (unlike some Mac fanboys) really understands.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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Nice one….thanks for all your input on this one. Now the $$ to fill that baby full of 2GB chips 🙂
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Hi Steve,
When you talk about 4,8 and 16 cpu workstations, what are we talking about here?
The 16 cpu option sounds pretty good or are you talking about using Gridiron to utilise multi quads? (which we will need it to be updated to work with AE7 first)Look forward to your repsonse.
Cheers,
Grant -
Although still a little pricey – https://www.boxxtech.com/products/apexx8.asp
That said, Tyan – https://www.tyan.com/ – (motherboard maker) is shipping 4 physical CPU (4 X Dual Core = 8 CPU) and 8 physical CPU (8 X Dual Core = 16 CPU) white box motherboards for the true adventurer.
Also – Intel and AMD have announced 4 Core (4 Core x 1 Physical CPU) silicon that will be shipping in Q3 this year. All this being said, the software (excluding Nucleo and Nucleo Pro of course…;) is going to take some time to catch up.
Steve
GridIron Software Inc.
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