1MW RAM was very expensive in 1984. It was actually 36bit + 8bit ECC memory. That was a limiting factor. Disks with >100 MB capacity were also quite expensive. With RAM, Disk, Tape and possibly other extensions the price was easily $100k for a new system.
1 MW was not really enough for practical development use. After a few years 4 MW = 18MB was a useful RAM size. Disks might then be 300MB or even larger. Which made virtual memory of 200-400 MB possible. Mid 80s onwards.
> That must have had an impact on optimizing the garbage collector.
That is one of the topics of the linked paper... ;-) We are not only talking about 'the' garbage collector, but the whole memory management system, which provided static/manual memory management and various forms of GCs.
1 MW was not really enough for practical development use. After a few years 4 MW = 18MB was a useful RAM size. Disks might then be 300MB or even larger. Which made virtual memory of 200-400 MB possible. Mid 80s onwards.
> That must have had an impact on optimizing the garbage collector.
That is one of the topics of the linked paper... ;-) We are not only talking about 'the' garbage collector, but the whole memory management system, which provided static/manual memory management and various forms of GCs.