[eblade]

Swap memory, as it's called when you use storage as extra system memory is really hard on flash storage. Killed an SD card on my old Nokia N800 doing this. It was also an option on rooted android devices, I tried it on an old advent vega tablet with 512mb ram and it stopped apps being killed in the background slightly but performance was shocking as flash memory is really quite slow.

The playbook is only really good for its Web browser. Just a shame it's JS performance brings certain webpages to a standstill. The omap chip in the playbook is just not upto the job of giving us a really good experience.

Posted via CB10

Other than the iPad line, the JS performance on the PlayBook pretty much blew every other mobile system out of the water until quite probably very recently (within the last year or so). It's browser was far and away the best until Chrome started to become available everywhere, and might even still outdo some of the mobile Chrome implementations.

The type of flash used in devices like this would not last long at all if you used it as swap space.

Throughput is also very slow compared to PC drives, so the lag would be very, very annoying.

These are not like desktop or laptop computers, which is something that other companies apparently figured out sooner than BB did.

Sent from my iPhone 5S using Tapatalk

.... eh... for example, webOS phones and tablets do quite well with some amount of swap space added to them. My heading on 3 year old TouchPad will probably experience permanent battery death long before it experiences permanent flash death. And it's not really showing any signs of either of those coming up any time soon.

[46Nico40]

Honestly.. spending resources on a fully functional Playbook version of BB10 is useless. It's not like stores are suddenly going to stock them and they will fly off the shelves. Sure, it will make us happy but i'll still use my PlayBook for the things that I did before. At this point in time, my PlayBook actually functions to its needs.

PS. It would be nice if we got some android runtime updates. Possibly an update for the browser too.

Posted via CB10

[milo53]

Economics baby! Just think a year ago all the BB employees working on the Playbook project, top-bottom, today ZERO, not 1 engineer, not 1 tech support, nada! All us PB owners took it up the ole b@#* real nice. Ouch!

I bet there are plenty of folks working on the Bombardier Global Express Corporate Jet, no cutting expenses in that department. Gotta keep those 19 seats cozy for Chens commute to HQ and tours around the globe.

[TimJohnSmith]

Everyone seems to assume using the storage memory as swap space. Why not use storage memory as the active system memory? The current, or a portion of, the current system memory could be used as swap memory. Hence the idea of parsing 4GB of storage memory for system usage.

As to resources: Yes I realize that BlackBerry has removed everything from the PlayBook. This is a thought process.

The benefits of creating a full BB10 experience on the PlayBook would be the expansion of the platform to the several million users with PlayBooks. Thus making app production for the platform more viable for developers, retailers, agencies, organizations and anyone else who might make use of apps on a platform.

Tim Smith from my Z10 on Rogers

[Wongsky]

Everyone seems to assume using the storage memory as swap space. Why not use storage memory as the active system memory? The current, or a portion of, the current system memory could be used as swap memory. Hence the idea of parsing 4GB of storage memory for system usage.

You seem to have missed the point about memory, virtual memory and speed of access.

And do you think that a) main memory is accessed more than swap space / paging space b) less than swap space / paging space? But I'll chuck out a bit of a spoiler - moving allocation of main memory to flash storage (and by consequence, swap / paging to RAM) would be bad for at least 2 reasons, if not 17.

Crippling main memory speeds by using flash storage so that you can use RAM for swap / paging / virtual memory? It would cripple OS performance, as well as well as likely shorten it's life.

Wood for the trees...

And just for completeness, so we're all on the same page, swapping!=paging (well not necessarily, although it could well be linked). The two, albeit similar activities and use of virtual memory, are not equal.

As to resources: Yes I realize that BlackBerry has removed everything from the PlayBook. This is a thought process.

The benefits of creating a full BB10 experience on the PlayBook would be the expansion of the platform to the several million users with PlayBooks. Thus making app production for the platform more viable for developers, retailers, agencies, organizations and anyone else who might make use of apps on a platform.

What you've missed, is that apart from a few loyal forum-ites, and people that probably couldn't care less about BB10 on the PlayBook - nobody cares about the PlayBook any more.

They've moved on.

And, when it makes sense*, so should everybody else.



* I still use my PlayBooks several times a day

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

What you've missed, is that apart from a few loyal forum-ites, and people that probably couldn't care less about BB10 on the PlayBook - nobody cares about the PlayBook any more.

They've moved on.

And, when it makes sense*, so should everybody else.

If tomorrow Chen announced that a custom 10.3.1 was available for the PlayBook.... you would find that there are plenty of people that "care".

Most have figured out that a secure device like the PlayBook is not going to get a new OS unless BlackBerry wants it to. And that BlackBerry has pretty much decided to let the PlayBook RIP... so they have moved on. That doesn't mean they don't care.

[Wongsky]

If tomorrow Chen announced that a custom 10.3.1 was available for the PlayBook.... you would find that there are plenty of people that "care".

By that I meant BlackBerry - that's why I said "And, when it makes sense*, so should everybody else."

By "nobody", I really meant "nobody at BlackBerry" - I suppose I could have been more explicit, but it sometimes sucks the life out of things. But the clue was in the "so should everybody else".

And by that, I don't mean people should just ditch the PlayBook in a fit of pique - I haven't - just don't bet the plantation on anything else happening. If we're lucky, there might be the odd further bit of security patching.

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

What you've missed, is that apart from a few loyal forum-ites, and people that probably couldn't care less about BB10 on the PlayBook - nobody cares about the PlayBook any more.

They've moved on.

And, when it makes sense*, so should everybody else.

By that I meant BlackBerry - that's why I said "And, when it makes sense*, so should everybody else."

By "nobody", I really meant "nobody at BlackBerry" - I suppose I could have been more explicit, but it sometimes sucks the life out of things. But the clue was in the "so should everybody else".

And by that, I don't mean people should just ditch the PlayBook in a fit of pique - I haven't - just don't bet the plantation on anything else happening. If we're lucky, there might be the odd further bit of security patching.

My bad, I''m not bilingual. I only understand English, and not even that all the time.

[TimJohnSmith]

You seem to have missed the point about memory, virtual memory and speed of access.

And do you think that a) main memory is accessed more than swap space / paging space b) less than swap space / paging space? But I'll chuck out a bit of a spoiler - moving allocation of main memory to flash storage (and by consequence, swap / paging to RAM) would be bad for at least 2 reasons, if not 17.

Crippling main memory speeds by using flash storage so that you can use RAM for swap / paging / virtual memory? It would cripple OS performance, as well as well as likely shorten it's life.

Wood for the trees...

And just for completeness, so we're all on the same page, swapping!=paging (well not necessarily, although it could well be linked). The two, albeit similar activities and use of virtual memory, are not equal.



What you've missed, is that apart from a few loyal forum-ites, and people that probably couldn't care less about BB10 on the PlayBook - nobody cares about the PlayBook any more.

They've moved on.

And, when it makes sense*, so should everybody else.



* I still use my PlayBooks several times a day

And you seemed to have missed the point. I do understand memory and have programmed, in the past, on systems using different speeds of memory. It is a viable possibility. Though, I don't know the speed of the storage memory used, I have helped with a Unix network running 30 work stations on a 4MB 386. Back then 60, 70, and 80 nanosecond ram was the norm. How fast does the memory have to be to run well? Is the storage memory faster than that?

Wearing out the flash memory? So, the possibility of wearing out part of the PlayBook through usage versus through software obsolescence is preferable? And that obsolescence is already here. Even the browser isn't displaying some websites anymore.

And lastly you have proven why one should never make assumptions of others. I'm well aware that BlackBerry has shelved interest in the PlayBook. It doesn't mean questions are not to be asked. It seems like you enjoy looking down on others, but that is just an assumption.

Tim Smith from my Z10 on Rogers

[Wongsky]

And you seemed to have missed the point. I do understand memory and have programmed, in the past, on systems using different speeds of memory. It is a viable possibility. Though, I don't know the speed of the storage memory used, I have helped with a Unix network running 30 work stations on a 4MB 386. Back then 60, 70, and 80 nanosecond ram was the norm. How fast does the memory have to be to run well? Is the storage memory faster than that?

I have worked in the IT industry since 1990, on mainframes, mid-range Unix platforms, multi-user Windows platforms. And been an OS specialist, plus systems programmer for quite some time.

Either you don't know, or aren't thinking about why certain types of memory are used, and the hit of using various things for virtual memory.

Swapping, and to a more modern degree, paging, to secondary storage, is an "expensive" activity, from an OS perspective, because of the differences of speed of the various mediums.

RAM needs to be a fast as possible - because pages are acessed very frequently - speed is of critical importance - why do you think various types of cache are used? All the time something like that is being served, the longer it takes, the more it's slowing down something that's evolved to work very fast - the CPU.

Extending into virtual memory is a "costly" behaviour, allowed to cater for when main memory was becoming exhausted to allow a bit of temporary, graceful wiggle room. Pre-emptive paging is done to try and retain OS ability to react / cater for new processes and provide a very ameniable OS (multi-purpose type activity). When either activity (swapping, or paging) are being done, heavily, to virtual memory, the OS is struggling to keep up with the demand for access to main memory, and typically, performance is notably degraded, because a much slower medium is being used.

Now in times gone by, virtual memory / secondary storage, was euphemism for using areas of disk - which was substantially slower to access than RAM, but significantly cheaper.

These days, especially for SoC type devices, but increasingly for other types of devices (eg laptops, PCs, servers), secondary storage is provided by flash memory. Still a fair amount slower than RAM, and in many cases, not suited to the types of read and write that either RAM, or disk would normally tolerate, without becoming degraded / failling.

Nobody who understands OSs and memory usage would suggest using slower secondary storage for main memory, and RAM for swap - it's mutually defeating, and entirely misses the point of why each is used.

Wearing out the flash memory? So, the possibility of wearing out part of the PlayBook through usage versus through software obsolescence is preferable? And that obsolescence is already here. Even the browser isn't displaying some websites anymore.

The rationale is - there's only one way to say it, and I'm trying not to be pejorative - stupid.

Seventeenthly - who's about to implement a stupid idea, simply because of the notion that there's probably not enough RAM for what's desired. Reversing their usage is, trying to be as diplomatic as possible - daft. Fundamentally flawed.

Tick in the box mentality, rather than understanding.

And lastly you have proven why one should never make assumptions of others. I'm well aware that BlackBerry has shelved interest in the PlayBook. It doesn't mean questions are not to be asked. It seems like you enjoy looking down on others, but that is just an assumption.

Make as many assumptions as you like.

It's nothing personal for me. I'm not calling you stupid. I'm just saying what you've written is stupid.

There is a difference. But whether it gives you pique, or otherwise, the notion is truly nonsensical.

As to the PlayBook, the issue is simple - from all we've been told, the PlayBook is effectively too under-spec to run the current evolution of BB10. It's an old device. I'm not saying it's got no value, or that people shouldn't use them - I use both of mine several times a day. But there comes a point, where the notion of trying to get it to do something, that with the best will in the world, it no longer has the chops for, is a fool's errand.