NX4 & 32bit OS
NX4 & 32bit OS
(OP)
Hi All, I'm new so please be gentle!!!
I had a conversation with a Siemens Rep today, and he made the statement that NX4 (32bit version) on a 32bit os will access 4gb of virtual memory.
I have been under the impression that any 32bit application can only access a maximum of 2gb of virtual memory.
We are currently running HP xw6400 workstations with windows XP pro SP2 (32bit os) which are dual processor machines.
I may incorrectly be under the impression, that this allows us to run two applications which would both be capable of using approximately 2gb each. (Obviously ignoring what ever XP needs just to operate + TcEng + email).
Our assemblies are quite large 1000's of components (more that 2gb of data) so we currently use vis mock-up to visualise large assemblies, but it would be advantageous to be able to open lots of NX parts to enable some real time design in context activities e.g. work with a dressed drive train in the car etc.
I am sure that I have loaded assemblies. So large that the machine has crashed, long before I approached 4gb.
64bit isn't a current option due to finance issues, but purchasing extra memory may be a short term solution.
So bottom line, is it worth me convincing my company to spend money on a memory upgrade?
Thanks for any clarification.
NX Jockey





RE: NX4 & 32bit OS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_memory
I think you'll find that Virtual Memory and Physical memory are actually the same thing.
If you want to extend your memory slightly try setting the /3GB switch. The page below gives instructions that will allow you to choose in case anything goes wrong. Once you're running okay delete the entry that you don't use to get rid of the dual boot prompt.
htt
Beyond that if you want to go for more memory you'll need to look at 64Bit OS and I'd recommend 8Gb and at that point you're also better and easier to go up to at least NX-5. People using NX-4 and earlier under 64Bit configurations have too many annoying teething problems with drivers and whatnot.
Hope this helps
Best Regards
Hudson
www.jamb.com.au
Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum
RE: NX4 & 32bit OS
However, if you were to install 32bit NX on a 64bit Windows systems, which will work just fine since 32bit applications are allowed to run in 32bit native mode, the 64bit system can now access more than 4gb of memory, therefore the system now makes the first 4gb of memory available to any application, be it 32bit or 64bit, including 32bit NX. This means that without setting any special switches or anything, 32bit NX will automatically access up to 4gb of memory since that first 4gb is always free, unlike with the 32bit OS where some of it (usually a minimum of around 1gb) was always reserved for the OS.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.org/museum/
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: NX4 & 32bit OS
"I think you'll find that Virtual Memory and Physical memory aren't entirely the same thing."
I think John's explanation clarifies it somewhat as well. Although I think analogies with the glass being half full will continue to prove confusing with 32/64 Bit OS'.
Mind you what is really pertinent to the question is that as I understand it NX-4 does run as a 32bit application under a 64bit OS and therefore is less capable than the later versions of NX which are written for 64bit. It also as I alluded to earlier has woeful hassles with graphics drivers.
Best Regards
Hudson
www.jamb.com.au
Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum
RE: NX4 & 32bit OS
This is also a very misleading statement. The 32bit version of NX is identical to the 64bit version of NX EXCEPT for the fact that the code was compiled and built on a 64bit system. Granted, this immediately gives NX the ability to address more memory, but as far as the software, there are no differences in the application code itself. That is, unless someone noticed that they had exceeded some old 32bit imposed memory limitation, there would be NO discernible difference between running the 32bit version of NX and the 64bit version, certainly none when it comes to being able to perform some task or model some topology. We develop only ONE VERSION OF NX and the common source code from that process is then pre-processed to format it so that it's compatible with the development environments of a particular target platform that we are porting to the code to, be it Windows 32bit/64bit, Linux 64bit and soon Apple Mac OS-X 64bit, but that's the extent of the differences, period!!!
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.org/museum/
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: NX4 & 32bit OS
If my later statements aren't consistent with your explanation of how the memory works then I don't know how I should be clearer. Is it really necessary to state that all the functions written into the software are identical, since nobody inferred otherwise, in a discussion purely centred on memory usage?
Best Regards
Hudson
www.jamb.com.au
Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum
RE: NX4 & 32bit OS
That being said, back to the original issue, there is of course a difference in the memory limitations, but that alone does make the software more or less 'capable'. Besides, we foresee the 32bit Windows version of NX as still being the most popular version for some time yet, at least the next couple of years I would expect.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.org/museum/
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: NX4 & 32bit OS
Just so we're all clear I'm not actually representing the product so I think I can state an opinion as long as it is accurate without meaning any harm. Having done so by all means I'll stand corrected if you think what I said may have been misinterpreted, since we agree that the functionality is identical I no longer see any further issue with that clarification now firmly in place. For future reference though I must still say that the semantics around what the word "capable" means have me flummoxed.
What if anything would you add then to the thrust of my point that things go better with later versions than NX-4 especially once you go up to 64Bit OS?
I wouldn't after all this discussion at cross purposes want to leave the poster, whose original question it was, confused as to whether that indeed was/not the best course of action.
IMHO: It is not the fault of the software that memory limitations exist from one OS to the next, but as long as it ultimately impacts performance to the user I see no harm in saying the later versions are more capable on two grounds. Firstly because you enhanced them and they are now better; a positive we can all draw from the conversation, and secondly because people with the right machine and OS running both side by side should find that the later versions of the software offer better performance simply because they are able to utilise memory more fully.
OR to draw an example perhaps not yet mentioned; if you were to run NX-4 on a 64Bit computer with a 64Bit OS and 8Mb of RAM does it then get use of any more than 4Mb, and if so have I been misinformed that NX-5 & 6 are also better able to use the memory in other ways. I would stand really corrected if that were the case all along and I had been simply unaware of the facts. I'm happy to stand corrected there if necessary since I'm here to learn as much as anyone, and "there's no such thing as a stupid question!" right?
Sadly you have the last part right, nobody seems to be in a hurry to take up Vista and even the 64Bit versions of XP are slow on the uptake. It seems simply to be a fact of life that a lot of other 3rd party software which people know and love is still anchored in the main to 32bit OS.
Best Regards
Hudson
www.jamb.com.au
Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum
RE: NX4 & 32bit OS
As for the question of running NX on 64bit Windows, if you ran the 32bit version of NX 4, it would be able to access 4Gb of memory, as would be the case if you ran 32bit versions of NX 5 or NX 6 on the same 64bit Windows system. 32bit is 32bit is 32bit. Granted, if you opted for the 64bit version, you'd get enhanced memory support, but that's about all, for now anyways.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA
http://www.siemens.com/plm
http://www.plmworld.org/museum/
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: NX4 & 32bit OS
Thanks for the reply it makes things clearer for me. And yes obviously I was doing too much mucking about with the italics and paying too little attention to my Giga's and Mega's.
Anyway so there seems to be both 32 and 64 bit versions of NX-4 and NX-5 though not NX-3. I imagine anyone entitled to download anything is welcome to download either so while I know the NX-5 seems to go better with 8Gb wouldn't our memory strapped should at least be advised to grab the NX-4 64bit release and would they in that case be able to get use of more than 4Gb of memory?
I'm starting to think I was in fact poorly advised but that if persistence pays off I may finally learn something here. I have in fact been labouring under the apparent misapprehension that NX-4 and NX-5 were a lot more different in how they deal with 64bit versus 32bit than may in fact be the case.
Best Regards
Hudson
www.jamb.com.au
Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum
RE: NX4 & 32bit OS
Before you even ask, I muffed the edit in the second paragraph it should read something like....
"I imagine anyone entitled to download anything is welcome to download either so while I know the NX-5 seems to go better with 8Gb shouldn't our memory strapped at least be advised to grab the NX-4 64bit release and would they in that case be able to get use of more than 4Gb of memory?"
That is to say assuming that they upgrade their machine to take advantage...etc
Best Regards
Hudson
www.jamb.com.au
Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum
RE: NX4 & 32bit OS
in addition, here's some info about how Various 32bits systems handle their memory...
1- 32-bits OSs from Microsoft continue having a very strange limitation, still "linked" to the old primordial "segmentation" of memory of the first IBM PC x86 architecture. Due to this fact, XP together with Vista, despite being able to resolve ADDRESSES of 32-bits, i.e. to ADDRESS 4 GB of RAM memory without any other "extender", do are only able to USE the first 3 GB of this address space. So, if you run Microsoft's 32-bits, no chance: even if you have 4 GB on board, you will completely miss the last 1 GB.
2- in addition, unless you force the system not to do so, Microsoft's OSs separate the memory reserved to the OS's processes and the memory reserved to the applications. As a standard setting, the applications won't be able to access a block of more than (total_RAM - 1) GB, so at most 2 GB. By enabling the "/3GB" switch, you allow the applications to expand without limit up to the whole free memory remaining after the OS has loaded its components. By doing this, however, case may arise in which the memory is so saturated that a minimal expansion in the memory requests from the OS's services will cause the system to crash down.
3- An application, however, may very well be able to address full-32 bits "spaces", as NX4+ do, but this will be pointless in a Microsoft 32-bits OS. As John Baker says, to develop the full potential of a 32-bits NX, under Microsoft's OS you will need to run it under a 64-bits OS !!!
4- This limitation doesn't apply with x86 Unix or Linux. 32-bits Linux or Unix do are able to handle the full 4 GB allowed by the address space 2^32.
5- Apart from exceptions such as device drivers and so on, 32-bits applications can run natively under 64-bits OS. If they don't, it's only because they make reference to OS-related "entries" which have been changed from 32-bits to 64-bits versions OF THE OS. When recompiling for 64-bits, you expand by the power of 2 the dimension of the address space, thus making it possible to handle far larger models and so on. For example, 32-bits version of ANSYS does is able to run under XP-64, but of course it's a stupid choice from the user: why auto-limiting the size of the largest problem which can be handled? The same applies, as far as I understand, to NX.
6- Just to add some more complication: what is limited by the 32-bits address space is PHYSICAL RAM. Of course, you can load into RAM some kind of program which "converts" larger spaces into 32-bits words. Nothing prevents you from using 2x 32-bits words, i.e. 8 Bytes instead of 4, in order to identify an address. In fact, you can see that XP-32 and Vista-32 are able to handle Pagefiles of much more than 4 GB, often expanding up to 9 GB, sometimes even more. A 8 GB file CAN be correctly read and handled under XP-32 by any program able to "splice" or "split" the address spaces... You will find curious, however, that this is possible with NTFS filesystem and NOT with FAT32, even if both are 32-bits-based...
The difference is, in fact, that with 64-bits native systems, a "single word" is 8 Bytes long, whether with 32-bits systems you have to form a "sentence" of two 4-Bytes words in order to "say" the same thing, and the sentence formation will need other 32-bits words of instructions, thus making native 64-bits applications more efficient under 64-bits operating systems.
... Hope that I didn't get confused, and that I haven't confused anybody...
Regards
RE: NX4 & 32bit OS
Okay I knew 1), I knew 2) and have had such crashes as you describe, I didn't know 3) but I was aware the Linux had the advantage as you described under 4).
I also acknowledged the pros and cons of 64bit you mentioned under 5) but gee those graphics drivers but gee the attendant problems of getting drivers to work have held many people back.
The last part about FAT32 vs NTFS on 32bit vs 64bit is kind of interesting but I think my brain reached the limit of its virtual memory half way through that point and decided that it may have been interesting as a paradox, but strictly on a need to know basis. I always use NTFS anyway just the extra security and networking reasons.
John,
If this fellow is correct I guess that you'll shortly be confirming some of my earlier statements were in fact mistaken which I'll just acknowledge in advance to save everyone the trouble. But I'd still like to check that 64bit NX-4 can in fact use more than 4Gb of RAM.
Now all I'd have to do is find a forum that can tell me where to find drivers, and a whole range of other software that failed during my last attempt at installing Xp64 and then maybe I'll be prepared to use it.
Best Regards
Hudson
www.jamb.com.au
Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum