Our application deals with large files, say 2Gb, and accepted wisdom is users need RAM 10X dataset size. Developers have well-specced machines but some users see horrible performance which we attribute to their much lower RAM, but can't categorically prove or measure.
Is there a way on Windows, Linux, Mac to 'hide' RAM from the OS without turning it off. Ideally at run-time i.e. not BIOS? Or even a utility which will gobble a requested amount of RAM and prevent other apps using it?
Our application also makes heavy GPU demands via OpenGL which makes VMs a tricky option. I know that Parallels and VirtualBox simply don't support the OpenGL version we use, others might but are sometimes pricey.