Database Info

RAM Program Utilization?

Can someone explain to me how Program Storage space is allocated.
To the best of my understanding the Kaiser has 128MB RAM for running programs.
However, if I look in the Memory applet it shows TOTAL 95.36MB. I will assume that this is calculating in the base RAM needed to load up the ROM?
So, if I have 95.36 TOTAL it then says I have 35.19 IN USE. This is after shutting down all running programs AND removing everything from the startup menu.
I then go into task manager to look at running tasks and add up all of their memory utilization and only get between 6-7MB. Now I don't totally understand because it looks like things like file system drivers and services are listed here...I would think those things would be included in loading the device itself (and this part of that missing RAM from the 128 as mentioned above).
So with only 6-7MB accounted for in Task manager, what is taking up the remainder of the 35.19MB?
Also, does anyone have any good stats on at what % utilization the device starts to slow down? Theoretically you should be able to run very close to maximum RAM (assuming all needed apps are open).
And, another question out of curiosity is what do most people have for their base utilized RAM on a clean reboot? By this I mean you would have all your services loaded (BT, voice command, touchflo, etc.) and all your necessary today plugins, menu shells etc, but NOT applications like PIE or TCPMP. I find that mine tends to be in the 60%+ range as of right now.
Thanks for any info you can give!

Ok.. I just realized that the Task Manager had additonal tabs that I didn't see...specifically services. Now on a WindowsXP system running services will also usually list a corresponding process that shows RAM utilization. WM doesn't seem to show that information.
So it's entirely possible that all my missing RAM is taken up by additional running services. Any application that will fully detail this out for me?
Also, is there a list of services somewhere? I often go into my XP machine and disable any extraneous services... can I do the same in WM?
thx

yes, and there is also the so called "page-pool' that is a sort of cache / buffer.

th_undead said:
yes, and there is also the so called "page-pool' that is a sort of cache / buffer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this is true, the higher your page pull the less ram you will have but the faster your phone will run. i remember back on my wizard i would alway set like a 32(i think it was 32 or mayb 16)mb pagepool so the phone would run super fast. but at the same time i had like 15mb of free ram....i toke a faster phone lol

Ah right the pagepool... and I think dutty's latest uses a 24MB one which could account for alot of the missing RAM.
Ok...well so here is another question.
Let's say you are running at a high memory utilization....let's say 70-80%
If you could drop that down 10-15% by decreasing your pagepool would that be more efficient? This goes back to my original question of performance as utilization levels increase.
I thought I saw a post somewhere that showed only very minor increases in performance as the pagepool was increased... is it worth that vs. the slowdown (if any) when running at a high utilization?

[Idea]add memory to myTouch

Originally, a2sd was developed to allow installation of many apps on G1 as G1 has limited memory. The MT3G has more internal memory so it does not need a2sd.
My question is if we can enable a2sd on a MT3G and than use the additional memory for the system. This can improve performance so much ....
Is this possible? I'm a dev, but not on this kind of platform . I know shell scripting, Unix, C so I can help if needed, but don't know how to approach this thing.
Thx.

mr.tenuki said:
Originally, a2sd was developed to allow installation of many apps on G1 as G1 has limited memory. The MT3G has more internal memory so it does not need a2sd.
My question is if we can enable a2sd on a MT3G and than use the additional memory for the system. This can improve performance so much ....
Is this possible? I'm a dev, but not on this kind of platform . I know shell scripting, Unix, C so I can help if needed, but don't know how to approach this thing.
Thx.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It depends. Now if you have a 32a board, this is pointless. Unless you have 300+apps installed it will not hurt performance.
I sugest App killer to kill off unused apps that never shut down, it helps so much/
Me really dont need Apsd for mytouch, especially the new 32a boards. Running from the sd card slows everythign down. To improve your performance..
1. Get CPU overclosk from market, set lowest to 386, high to 528 screen on, screen off 256/256.
2. Download swapper, set to size of yoru swap partition etc...
3. Get any free app killer ( ifully suggest Anvanced task killer) and every hour or so, go in and ignore what u use all the time, and kill everything else.
Also, get Cachemate from market or Clean up. this clears out all the garbage.
Doing this, on a good day, my battery lasts 17 hours with data going. and My Live wallpapers never lag

Hi,
Thanks - I already have all that set up. I was thinking on a MOD that will allow improvement of performance in a different way.
My Idea is to actually use the memory that becomes available under /data as we move the app to SD to be used by /system partition. Maybe we can also do a "reverse RAM hack" and increase the 3D RAM.
Again, as I'm not very familiar with the Linux system I don't know how exactly this should be done, or if it can be done at all.
Thanks for the reply though

storage memory in the phone is different then addressable ram.. therefore what your saying is not possible...if you really want something like this set up a swap partition on your sd card.
also task killers are not needed for android... its been well documented here and on other forums as android handles processes much differently than your standard windows box (so no need to have the mindset that background apps are slowing down your system). android itself does an excellent job of managing memory and kills tasks itself when more mem is needed. i used to run ATK myself, and found after removing it my phone actually ran better than killing processes all the time.
your likely just having a placebo affect if you think it speeds up your phone.. however killing process can increase battery life.. albeit only slightly...try it yourself and you will see what im talking about..
regarding task killers, just google it and you will see what im saying...
edit: most roms have cpu scaling in them, if you want an app i find set cpu to be the best, followed by overclock widget...
edit2: forgot to mention autostarts . a great program to edit which programs start up upon boot .. if your still worried about having things running in the background...

I was trying to get a swapfile on /Data (being a lot faster than sdcard, probably), but It didn't work :/

[Q] Memory (RAM) usage confusion

I have two Task Managers installed: "System Panel" and "Advanced Task Manager"
When I use the above two apps to check my free memory (RAM) available, it always shows around 75-100 mb remaining
When I use the stock app manager to check free memory, the value is always significantly higher - like 140-160 mb.
Does anyone know why there is discrepancy between the two readings? Which one shows the more accurate value?

sax1981 said:
I have two Task Managers installed: "System Panel" and "Advanced Task Manager"
When I use the above two apps to check my free memory (RAM) available, it always shows around 75-100 mb remaining
When I use the stock app manager to check free memory, the value is always significantly higher - like 140-160 mb.
Does anyone know why there is discrepancy between the two readings? Which one shows the more accurate value?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i dont know why there would be a discrepancy but you shouldnt use a task manager/killer on android 2.2+

slowz3r said:
i dont know why there would be a discrepancy but you shouldnt use a task manager/killer on android 2.2+
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why not?

sax1981 said:
Why not?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Starting in Froyo, Android has become more efficient at it's own native memory management than past versions and Gingerbread continued that improvement. What this means is that if Android starts running low on RAM, it will start killing things itself and reclaiming/reallocating the memory without the need for a third party app. The other concern about using a TasKiller most people raise is that if you set it to autokill, system apps or other sort of apps that need to be run(such as Facebook widget, other kind of widgets, noLED, et al) will relaunch on their own causing the TasKiller to kill it again... relaunch... kill... relaunch... kill keep your CPU cycles at 100% and draining your battery quicker than it should be.
That being said, I still use a TasKiller on autokill with the screen off simply because I like to (and paid for the app, so dangit, I'm gonna use it! ). Once you have identified the apps that relaunch upon kill and set TasKiller to ignore them, the battery concern isn't an issue.

sax1981 said:
Why not?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
they changed the way android 2.2+ handles apps in the background so when the task killer kills an app it does more harm than good, mainly kill the hell out of your battery because android wants to start it back up again
Dont know the details but thats the jist of it

System panel is a must have. It's not used to kill all apps, just to monitor your phone and kill an out of control app.
To answer the question, the way android shares RAM between processes is very difficult to actually identify free RAM and which apps are using what. So some apps make the choice to display the free RAM differently, no way around it as there is no one "right answer" on each memory usage. I always go by system panel myself.

RogerPodacter / slowz3r / unremarked - Thanks for the info!

(Q) Droid Charge ram 328 or 512?

Sorry if this question has been answered somewhere, but I searched and couldn't find a reliable answer. When I go to task manager, it always shows memory usage out of 328mb available. Everything I read prior to purchase indicated there was 512mb ram. If I'm going to be locked in contract for any extended period of time I definitely need more than 328. 512 is already low by today's standard, but 328mb is ridiculously bad. Anyone that knows the answer and a way to verify would be greatly appreciated as all the searches I do come up with both answers.
Thanks for the help guys.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk

In addition to the above mentioned issue... I frequently have 250+ out of the available 328 used even when task manager indicates no apps running. Is there that much going on in the background? In case this helps I'm running the ED2 debloated rom so I can't imagine how bad it would be if I still had all the bloat in there.
Thanks again for the input
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk

The phone has 512MB total, with some of that allocated to the system that can't be used by apps. This memory goes to thinks like the GPU to give you that stellar video performance. Sucks that it can't be changed really, but that is how it's setup. I believe that we can get a few MB back from the system, but you won't get all of it back.

imnuts said:
The phone has 512MB total, with some of that allocated to the system that can't be used by apps. This memory goes to thinks like the GPU to give you that stellar video performance. Sucks that it can't be changed really, but that is how it's setup. I believe that we can get a few MB back from the system, but you won't get all of it back.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks a lot for the response. Makes me a lot more comfortable with holding on to this guy. There must be some serious bacground processes going. because I've yet to see anything lower than 180mb used (about 150 available) and that's with autokiller at extreme preset, which I normally wouldn't set so high...I just wanted to see if any additional mb's would free up.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk

Ok, android 101:
Android uses smart caching and background process management to keep your apps available and running smoothly. As such the more RAM you have free the more you are WASTING. This system is designed to run up to 99% RAM use before turning off any running apps/background processes.
Ever since android 2.2 it has been HIGHLY efficient at doing so. Using autokillers to keep RAM free is pointless, as most apps don't even use ANY CPU when in background, unless they perform background checks for things like is it your turn on words with friends, etc. Unless you have an app that uses too much background data like this (in which case I'd just get rid of the app...) then using killers is pointless, let the OS run the way it is designed to do. Ever since I listened to a ROM dev and stopped using task killers my battery life on my original droid has nearly tripled, and I'm overclocking it from 566 to 1200mhz!
Android is not windows 95, you don't need to hold its hand and make sure things are closed, doing so actually defeats the advanced features of the OS, decreases battery life in all but a very few cases, and increases your app startup times, keeps you from getting background updates properly, etc.

warriorprophet said:
Ok, android 101:
Android uses smart caching and background process management to keep your apps available and running smoothly. As such the more RAM you have free the more you are WASTING. This system is designed to run up to 99% RAM use before turning off any running apps/background processes.
Ever since android 2.2 it has been HIGHLY efficient at doing so. Using autokillers to keep RAM free is pointless, as most apps don't even use ANY CPU when in background, unless they perform background checks for things like is it your turn on words with friends, etc. Unless you have an app that uses too much background data like this (in which case I'd just get rid of the app...) then using killers is pointless, let the OS run the way it is designed to do. Ever since I listened to a ROM dev and stopped using task killers my battery life on my original droid has nearly tripled, and I'm overclocking it from 566 to 1200mhz!
Android is not windows 95, you don't need to hold its hand and make sure things are closed, doing so actually defeats the advanced features of the OS, decreases battery life in all but a very few cases, and increases your app startup times, keeps you from getting background updates properly, etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was always of the impression that an app such as autokiller differed from a standard task killer in that it modified the values at which android natively kills off processes vs me going in and manually closing an app (which i never do). I too have read articles that task killers are pointless and do more harm than good, but I always thought autokiller was a different sort of "tweak" if you will. I've even seen several devs promote that they've modified androids native memory management to be more aggressive, etc...which is what I thought autokiller accomplished. Autokiller simply seemed necessary to me with the Charge because I was experiencing lag and lockups even with a debloated rom and voodoo kernel. Clearly there could be several culprits to this this and I was simply testing out different fixes and seeing what the results were. Thanks for the heads up though...learn something new every day.

Autokiller memory opimizer (not a task killer)

What is the verdict on these memory optimizer type apps?
http://andrs.w3pla.net/autokiller/faq

I can't recommend Autokiller highly enough on Samsung Froyo phones. It was a must use, even with Voodoo, on my old SGS i9000, and the same thing on my Droid Charge.
True story: just this morning I was ready to throw my Charge against the wall in frustration. Ever since upgrading to EE4 the damn thing was LAG LAG LAG city, even with Voodoo. Phone was snappy as heck after a reboot, but after a couple of hours use, it started to lag, and then would get so laggy it was almost unusable. Seriously, opening apps would take 10 second. Auto-rotate the screen took 4-5 seconds.
I enabled Autokiller, set it "aggressive" and the phone's a speed demon again.
Try it, can't hurt your phone with it, might help it exponentially.

waiting for the phones built in lowmem killer is useless, use autokiller and you will notice an immediate improvement in phone response time. heres a point for ya, without it installed i have 78mb ram free,,,with installed 158ram. thats huge. for a phone. plus they dev just updated to reduce memory usage of the app itself, plus there are tweaks in the settings menu to make the IO scheduler more aggressive, improve sd card reads, battery life, wifi, networ,...its layered man. and free....whats more to love. the only other way i have found to improve phone speed feelwise is with kangfucius kernel and set that terd up to 1500hz with cfq. shazaam.

elucid said:
What is the verdict on these memory optimizer type apps?
http://andrs.w3pla.net/autokiller/faq
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Basically what you're doing is tweaking the settings for how Android frees up your memory. In theory, it should be good, because the defaults that were picked with the Android release aren't going to be appropriate for everyone. Just be careful not to be too aggressive or you might start losing functionality you want, such as alarms or background email checks.

chadness said:
Basically what you're doing is tweaking the settings for how Android frees up your memory. In theory, it should be good, because the defaults that were picked with the Android release aren't going to be appropriate for everyone. Just be careful not to be too aggressive or you might start losing functionality you want, such as alarms or background email checks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good point on not being too aggressive. The higher you set it, the more sticky sports ate pushed out of memory, so with the settings I have right now the phone kills some things that in the oat would have been running when I went back to them. I'm going to drop down from aggressive to strict and see if that's a better balance for how I use the phone.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk

Call me crazy but...
Android is linux based right? I.E. it uses a linux kernel? I was under the impression that was true. If so, unless you're running into the problem of completely filling RAM and having to wait for stuff to be cleared, this kind of thing will not help you!
Linux intentionally leaves commonly used items in RAM in order to decrease access time. It is perfectly normal for such a system to run at 70-80% memory usage. It is, in fact, a GOOD thing, because it means more memory is actually being put to a potentially useful purpose.
That being said, if you're actually running out of RAM I suppose something like this could help.

slight23 said:
Android is linux based right? I.E. it uses a linux kernel? I was under the impression that was true. If so, unless you're running into the problem of completely filling RAM and having to wait for stuff to be cleared, this kind of thing will not help you!
Linux intentionally leaves commonly used items in RAM in order to decrease access time. It is perfectly normal for such a system to run at 70-80% memory usage. It is, in fact, a GOOD thing, because it means more memory is actually being put to a potentially useful purpose.
That being said, if you're actually running out of RAM I suppose something like this could help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, yes, I frequently give the "in linux free memory is wasted memory" whenever people want to use some taskkiller app because they want a lot of free memory. This isn't about shooting for some high free memory number because we're Windows minded and think we need a lot of free memory, this is about finding the right settings for Android's own memory manager to keep the phone responsive. There's been something about my Samsung phones (except the Nexus S) where they just get laggy as hell with the stock memory manager settings.
As described above, my phone was almost unusable after a couple of hours booted up until I enabled Autokiller. Maybe something I'm running has memory leak; could be, but I pretty much run the same apps on all my phones, and the HTCs and Nexus S don't get laggy like the i9000 and Charge do.
This app, or the one named MinFreeManager really help. In the early days of the i9000 on MoDaCo site we were using the cat command to tweak the settings manually in our efforts to find a way to stop RFS lag before Voodoo came along.

I just installed this yesterday and configured it for strict mode. I also enabled all of the advanced system tweaks and so far I haven't noticed much if any difference, perhaps it depends on your individual usage and what apps, launcher, etc you're using. I'm going to leave it on and see how it goes though.

Any still using this? Any want to share what settings they use?