There is a bunch of speculation and misinformation in here that I
don't like.
First off, 32B devices (HTC DREAM, HTC MAGIC) with 192 MB ram run
elaire just fine. I'm doing so right now. The RAM requirements really
haven't changed all that much.... unless you do something a bit crazy,
like run launcher2 (which has other very ugly side effects besides
just hogging RAM). Note: with elaire on the DREAM, you can still run
big, memory hungry applications, like COPILOT without any problems.
ESPECIALLY it is fine if you run a little bit of COMPCACHE.
OR, if you don't need 3D, do a search for the "10 MB RAM HACK", which
takes a bunch of memory otherwise allocated to the GPU to bump up the
memory available to the kernel.
Now all that aside, it is quite pathetic how much memory is sucked up
by the baseband CPU and media junk on these devices. The only
explanation is that the developers (HTC) have NO IDEA how to write
efficient code. There is no excuse for there to be 94 MB drained by
this stuff. Even if you discount the GPU waste. IMO, this stuff should
not be using more than 8 MB. 16 would be sloppy. Add 20 MB on for the
GPU, and you have 36 MB SLOPPY, which should leave 156 for the kernel,
and THAT would be TONS.
In fact, that would be TOO MUCH.
The way that processes run on android, more memory means more running
processes, which means that the overall experience will be slower.
Processes get killed as new foreground processes need more memory than
what is currently available.