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Root RAM

Savage Shadows

Android Enthusiast
So specs say that our device has 768 MB of RAM. In the hardware information tab in the settings app, it also shows 768 MB of memory. But when using the task manager, it only shows a total of 584 MB total.

Now I've used the search function of this site enough to know that most of my searching for this wouldn't come up with the proper results, due to most search words either being numbers or being too short. Also, I've been pretty active here, and I haven't seen anything addressing this. So that is why I'm posting about this.

So here's the point of this thread. Where is that other 184 MB of RAM? Is it used for something else, but just included in some sort of a total memory count? Will our processor, being a single core or some other limitation, only be capable of using 584 MB? If there's nothing holding us back from that extra RAM, other than some code, can we do anything to access the rest of that memory?
 
I would assume certain elements like the underlying Android kernel and such use up a certain amount of ram and only show the rest of it to task manager. The GPU may also be borrowing the ram like what happens on PCs with integrated video cards.

It's only logical to assume that the system will always take up a certain chunk of that ram, so in most devices you won't have full access to all of the ram the hardware has. :P
 
Apache pretty well hit it on the head. It is system reserved, I don't know the full list but the gpu is one. How ever in the kernel source it was zeroed out for the gpu for some reason. Where I switched it back in my kernel but never seen a drop in ram available.
 
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