5 ms·
Not the same thing. malloc() can tell everybody it has the memory but when push comes to shove the OS will have to admit overbooking.
by lmilcin 5y ago
Not the same thing.
malloc() can tell everybody it has the memory but when push comes to shove the OS will have to admit overbooking.
- Spivak 5y agoThat's exactly what fractional reserve banking is.
- lmilcin 5y agoFunny thing, you are right. I was thinking about something else I guess.
- zeusk 5y agoWhat do you think is a bank run?
- underdeserver 5y agoTIL, unless you explicitly disable memory overcommit, it can and will overcommit. This is crazy to me.
- lmilcin 5y agoIt is not. It is actually very useful and advantageous for many reasons. The disadvantage is the pretty shitty failure mode. But in practice, I have never seen an operating system that was not a toy that was able to reliably, gracefully handle out of memory condition.
- dekhn 5y agoSo, uh, how do you feel about fractional reserve banking? Nearly all banks worldwide practice it. Statistically, it's not impossible that the entire world financial system could collapse due to uncorrelated bank runs.
- _3u10 5y agoIt is impossible. Only a moron of magnificent magnitude would fail to print additional cash to cover the run. The problems caused by the feds failure to lend to First Bank of America during the Great Depression are well understood by the central banks. What would likely happen is the overnight rate would go up to 12%, and additional money would be printed to cover withdrawals for the month or two most people would be willing to forgo 12% interest in a potentially inflationary economy.
- dekhn 5y agoi mean, the world financial system did almost just collapse, not that long ago, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932008 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80... more or less due to the confluence of several adverse events, each of which probably could have been buffered on its own. When you say additional money would be printed, I assume you mean the M0 money supply would be increased?
- _3u10 5y agoIn the case of a bank run specifically yes. In the more general case of a deleveraging (2008) it would be QE / asset purchases.
- perl4ever 5y agoFractional reserve, not fractional assets.
- underdeserver 5y agoIt's not impossible, no, but in the case of my computer a single user - me - controls memory usage. I guess it's beneficial in >99% of use-cases, and the <1% of other cases can turn it off. Still I guess I'm naive enough to hope a correct program would not crash.