Finally I can speak!
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During the Sametime 7.5 Beta I was under NDA and couldn't really say anything about the product. Which at times was a little aggravating as IBMers were busy blogging about it (and features that don't exist in it), but I stuck to the contract and didn't say a word. Now that it's shipped, I can comment on the shipping code. The first thing I noticed in the Beta builds and still see in the shipping is that this is one hungry beast. The following screenshots, show the memory usage of Sametime 7.5 Connect, Notes 6.5.5, Trillian and Sametime 7.0 Connect., there is an amazing difference in the real memory usage when minimized and maximized.
All applications maximized
All applications minimized
This memory usage is with ZERO additional Sametime plugins installed, so as you install plugins the memory usage will increase. Much of the memory is taken because Sametime is now built on the eclipse framework, so like a JVM in a browser, before it's even done anything useful a tonne of memory has been eaten. In fact Sametime 7.5 is probably the first eclipse framework product to get deployed in really large numbers outside the developer community, so it is going to be interesting to see how it handles it.
Obviously memory usage is large as Sametime 7.5 is a big beast and can do a lot more with the plugin model, eclipse does allow developers to build plugins that can pretty much do anything, which is both good and bad, for the first few months I think we are going to see plugins that pretty much do anything you can think of, people will build it into Sametime because they can not necessarily because they should.
The Trillian numbers are interesting, because I'm logged into 4 IM communities, AOL, Yahoo, ICQ, MSN and Trillian has plugin support but their memory usage is about a 1/3. I imagine the IBM answer to this will be something along the lines "Yes but Trillian is Windows only, Trillian is not built on open technologies, IBM has built sametime on an extensible platform for the future", which is very valid.
During the Sametime 7.5 Beta I was under NDA and couldn't really say anything about the product. Which at times was a little aggravating as IBMers were busy blogging about it (and features that don't exist in it), but I stuck to the contract and didn't say a word. Now that it's shipped, I can comment on the shipping code. The first thing I noticed in the Beta builds and still see in the shipping is that this is one hungry beast. The following screenshots, show the memory usage of Sametime 7.5 Connect, Notes 6.5.5, Trillian and Sametime 7.0 Connect., there is an amazing difference in the real memory usage when minimized and maximized.
All applications maximized
All applications minimized
This memory usage is with ZERO additional Sametime plugins installed, so as you install plugins the memory usage will increase. Much of the memory is taken because Sametime is now built on the eclipse framework, so like a JVM in a browser, before it's even done anything useful a tonne of memory has been eaten. In fact Sametime 7.5 is probably the first eclipse framework product to get deployed in really large numbers outside the developer community, so it is going to be interesting to see how it handles it.
Obviously memory usage is large as Sametime 7.5 is a big beast and can do a lot more with the plugin model, eclipse does allow developers to build plugins that can pretty much do anything, which is both good and bad, for the first few months I think we are going to see plugins that pretty much do anything you can think of, people will build it into Sametime because they can not necessarily because they should.
The Trillian numbers are interesting, because I'm logged into 4 IM communities, AOL, Yahoo, ICQ, MSN and Trillian has plugin support but their memory usage is about a 1/3. I imagine the IBM answer to this will be something along the lines "Yes but Trillian is Windows only, Trillian is not built on open technologies, IBM has built sametime on an extensible platform for the future", which is very valid.
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Comments
Posted by Tim Latta At 12:18:56 PM On 08/18/2006 | - Website - |
Like I said, I dont' have any pre-7.5 connect clients loaded. Before I started with the beta I just used Notes IM.
Posted by Chris Whisonant At 01:11:33 PM On 08/18/2006 | - Website - |
Like I said, I dont' have any pre-7.5 connect clients loaded. Before I started with the beta I just used Notes IM.
Posted by Chris Whisonant At 01:28:08 PM On 08/18/2006 | - Website - |
Posted by Tim Latta At 01:45:41 PM On 08/18/2006 | - Website - |
Posted by Brett At 02:38:21 AM On 08/19/2006 | - Website - |
http://www.idonotes.com/IdoNotes/IdoNotes.nsf/dx/08142006093216AMCMIJXJ.htm
Posted by Chris Miller At 10:55:07 AM On 08/20/2006 | - Website - |
So is this caused by bad design or just that eclipse will suck the memory out of any PC?
Paul
Posted by Paul Bunnell At 06:41:10 AM On 08/21/2006 | - Website - |
Posted by Joe User At 03:01:52 PM On 08/21/2006 | - Website - |
Please use your regular name when posting. IP: 131.239.47.251 as Joe User can be considerd Anonymous, and potentially runs the risks of being removed.
Posted by Carl At 04:51:06 PM On 08/21/2006 | - Website - |
You know about JIT compiler and all that?
Try your local wikipedia. Its all written there.
If you really want even try to talk seriously about all that, you may take such stuff into acount.
There are tons written about performance myths of Java, Eclipse, whatever out there.
Axel
Posted by Axel Janssen At 04:00:03 AM On 08/22/2006 | - Website - |
Posted by Carl Tyler At 09:34:00 AM On 08/22/2006 | - Website - |
1. Maybe I don't see it, but the sametime_on_eclipse thing requests 2,116 k. Nlnotes 5,123 k (more or less).
Also there have been widely adopted plug-in products based on eclipse technology:
though so far mostly in internal products: http://www.eclipse.org/community/rcp.php
Eclipse as RCP applications (non IDE) were a complite hack before release 3 of Eclipse.
You simply can't know how much of this memory is eaten by "the eclipse framework" (whatever that is) and sametime plug-ins.
Actually Eclipse is a plug-in framework. The Eclipse Platform Runtime which do management, startup, discovering-plug ins to put them in sort of a in-memory registry (p. 225, Jim Anjou et. Al., The Java Developers Guide to Eclipse). And this Platform runtime is really small. Not those 2,216 k. Some plug-ins are loaded on startup. Depends on internals of the sametime-plugins which are closed source.
The Eclipse technology has firm roots in embedded technology and the whole thing is developed to keep the memory footprint small (not as bigfootish as some Java Gui technologies from the 90ties).
I am developing plug-ins. As tools in a customized developmment process, not as enduser products.
I think the whole elipse/rcp thing opens quite a few opportunities and I don't understand, why people allways highlight the negative points.
It is so much more than the shiny-nice against memory-hungry deal.
Does the Microsoft community complain so much, when their products use a few more CPU cicles?
regards Axel
Posted by Axel Janssen At 12:21:12 PM On 08/22/2006 | - Website - |
It does not matter who the vendor is, memory and physical space overuse is overuse. Why does Sametime 7.5 need such a large footprint? And when i was running the beta (I have not installed the Gold yet), I was facing problems generated by ST memory leaks*, even after I "closed" the client.
* I have to assume it was ST 7.5 causing the problem, since the problems never occurred until I had installed ST 7.5 and went away after I uninstalled
Posted by Christopher Byrne At 01:23:56 PM On 08/22/2006 | - Website - |
Posted by Michael At 09:11:04 AM On 01/30/2007 | - Website - |
Any ideas?
Posted by Steve Smillie At 12:03:22 PM On 02/26/2007 | - Website - |