3.8 Machine most of us will actually buy ...

Q: OK, I don't have this much money. What is the reasonable configuration?

A: If you have the following machine, you should be able to stop worrying about memory and compilation performance:

• CPU: P133 with 256 KB off-chip cache;
• RAM: 32 MByte;
• Disk: 12 ms IDE with VLB controller, or SCSI;
• 4 MByte RAM disk;
• 8 MByte disk cache;

This will leave you with about 19 MBytes of free extended RAM. Note that the RAM disk must be at least 4 MBytes to hold the output of the preprocessor for some exceedingly large source files (notably, some GCC source files). If you don't have that much RAM to spare and still want to compile very large source files, either reduce the disk cache so you can give more to RAM disk, or point TMPDIR to your hard disk and make the disk cache larger, if you can.