Is it possible with a reasonable amount of effort to increase the
memory of a BeagleBoards to double numbers. Something along the lines
of 512MB for Bone or 1GB for xM? I had some difficulties finding
information on this so perhaps that's a pointer. Any experienced
modders out there to help out ?
It is not reasonable for you to attempt this, unless you can remove the memory from on top of the processor and find a memory at 1GB to replace it.
If you read the SRM for the BeagleBone, you will see that 256MB is as large as it can go with the current design.
Gerald
I don’t understand you people! Why do you need 1GB in an embedded system?? Even PC got 1GB not very long ago, but PC operating systems are far different from the ones used in the embedded world! First you ask to increase RAM, then apparently you ask to increase CPU freq… Are you lost? You don’t know what embedded systems are for??? You need terabytes of ram and super frequencies? Buy x86 with diesel generator to power it up. Deside what your system intends for and then choose an appropriate HW for it. Most of people don’t even guess how much resources they need for a specific task and ask to increase whatever is possible or impossible
If you are using beagleboard/pandaboard, then you are not an embedded
developer 
damm PC programmers trying to make it in embedded s;pace (-:
— On Tue, 11/22/11, Siarhei Siamashka siarhei.siamashka@gmail.com wrote:
> From: Siarhei Siamashka siarhei.siamashka@gmail.com
> Subject: Re: [beagleboard] 1GB on BeagleBoard-xM
> To: beagleboard@googlegroups.com
> Date: Tuesday, November 22, 2011, 11:52 AM
>
> 2011/11/22 Maxim Podbereznyy lisarden@gmail.com:
> > I don’t understand you people! Why do you need 1GB in an embedded system??
> > Even PC got 1GB not very long ago, but PC operating systems are far
> > different from the ones used in the embedded world! First you ask to
> > increase RAM, then apparently you ask to increase CPU freq… Are you lost?
> > You don’t know what embedded systems are for??? You need terabytes of ram
> > and super frequencies? Buy x86 with diesel generator to power it up. Deside
> > what your system intends for and then choose an appropriate HW for it. Most
> > of people don’t even guess how much resources they need for a specific task
> > and ask to increase whatever is possible or impossible
>
> If you are using beagleboard/pandaboard, then you are not an embedded
> developer
>
> –
> Best regards,
> Siarhei Siamashka
>
> –
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Oh really?? And who are all these people hanging out here?
Some of them are writing useless rants.
– Stephen
"Kids these days.
Whatever happened to hard work?"
– Joel Spolsky, The perils of javaschools
Hmmm - I seem to recall someone once said the microcomputer industry
only needed 640K of RAM! How things have changed!
fight nice, children... 
Everyone's first question is always "how can I max out the hardware".. Now that he knows he can only get 1/4 of what he wanted, now is the real challenge to make it work with what he's given. Anyone who's ever served in any military, knows what this is like.
Remember, If you can meet your original requirements with 1/4 of the resources, imagine what you could have done with your initial spec! Fight the bloat! That's the real reason for PC people using embedded systems. As a QA Specialist, I'm often appalled at the amount of code people use to do simple tasks. Developers, challenge yourself to minimize the amount of code you write by 50%. Streamline it. Yet keep all it's functionality. Don't tell me you can't do it! Can't means won't! You Can do it! And when you're able to do it, post it here and I for one will be one of the first to give you Kudo's because you are helping the entire industry by doing that!
/steps off his soapbox.
It is actually not that bad a question at all. The dynamics of the
market place is fickle. It is not how much memory you can actually use
but more like can I still buy the part in six month. Given how fast
Micron obsoletes it parts it's best to stay as far down the obsolesce
curve as possible, this usually means designing in the biggest part
possible.
Thanks for the input, for those who actually answered my question.
Obviously our application is very memory dependent and everything can
be done using swap, but it's merely a matter of speed. Furthermore,
it's not really an embedded system, so not much point in ranting.
Cool, so in order to become a real embedded programmer all you need to
do is just to replace "gcc" command with "arm-none-linux-gnueabi-
gcc". :))
Some people, believe that the moment you starting developing software that uses a POSIX compliant Operating System, which might be soft real-time, you are no longer so much in the “embedded domain”, but already moved to “application programming domain”. Not sure if there is a clear-cut-n-crisp definition of where embedded programming end and application programming begins.
Wonder what some folks would call these guys who used an Intel Atom based nano-ITX board, with an internally mounted (in custom chasis) USB controlled Relay board. The software is actually 20-30% C, and 70-80% Java + python, running on Ubuntu Linux. All this is powered directly off a regulated (switch-mode) 12V external supply, and run fan-less. They apparently made this device within 6 weeks from start of project, and thanks mostly to things being pretty much off the shelf, barring the USB based Relay controller board.
Embedded systems programming in extremely resource constrained environments was/is an extremely valuable skills while working with 8-bit/16-bit uC’s with teeny-weeny RAM. Anything that has MMU, supports external RAM, one might say anything >= 64MB is hardly in those resource constrained environments. More (RAM) the merrier.
You youngsters! In my day, 64K was top of the line for a desktop
system, and embedded systems were lucky to get 4K! Not much room for
bloat.
A little before that, there were Marchant and Friden machines with 0K
-- you supply pencil and paper.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Ahhh the good ol' times when having lots of memory was still cool.
Don't we all wish we still had to use floppy disks and never grow up.
64K! The first computer that I programmed had 64 *words* of high-speed
store. And a big, big 4k drum.
You can see it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferranti_Pegasus