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I haven't heard of this app before, so I looked around their site and docs. I was mildly interested in trying it out until I saw the requirements: "A system

I haven't heard of this app before, so I looked around their site and docs. I was mildly interested in trying it out until I saw the requirements: "A system with at least 4GB of RAM and 2 CPU cores.", but recommended 6 GB of RAM. Why does an image storage solution needs so much RAM?

frenkel 1y ago
Because it wants to recognize objects in you images.
fifafu 1y ago
If you just need an image storage solution: no, but then you don't need Immich. If you want the feature Immich offers: yes
tim-kt 1y ago
The last time I tried Immich (a year ago or so), my impression was that Immich tries to imitate Google Photos as much as possible. This includes features such as searching by a person or by "cat", which requires some machine learning sophistication, which is done locally (you can also disable these features). This would be my guess, but I'm not entirely sure.
d3vnull 1y ago
Because it's not just an "image storage solution". A thumb drive would be an image storage solution. If you're indexing, making geo queries, serving over the network, categorize, transcode video and everything else that's needed to create a google photos competitor, you're going to need the hardware to back it up.
darkwater 1y ago
Because it is written in Node, it uses several other softwares (i.e. Postgresql), it runs image/video processing on the fly (transcoding to various formats depending on what you upload and who views), it does face/object recognition running a local model and a few other nice features that yeah, require more power. It's not a static HTML of your photos.
abdusco 1y ago
You can turn off AI features. You won't need as much RAM, then.
diimdeep 1y ago
It is ridiculous bloat of "high level technobabble" npm install for web/ server/ % cloc . 81808 text files. 51415 unique files. Language files blank comment code --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- JavaScript 25050 453101 913671 4436663 TypeScript 14997 85346 630503 831318 JSON 2238 168 0 457435 Perl 233 10541 34463 293957 Markdown 1977 89859 1551 234399 Dart 1257 24152 14748 229937 Svelte 678 5917 190 51223 HTML 128 16361 90 31719 ... --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 51415 713200 1617503 6726009 In comparison, qemu does emulation of literally every hardware that there is and it is only 1/3 more code, and it is without counting code required to run nodejs, docker, postgresql, redis that is dependencies of this image catalogue software. qemu-10.1.0 % cloc . 58961 text files. 43347 unique files. Language files blank comment code --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C 18063 1068616 1312988 5590243 C/C++ Header 13980 366138 907350 1774239 Assembly 1370 42839 55872 320027 Python 1345 67483 89294 255732 SUM: 43347 1789003 2759752 9220521 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- bo0tzz 1y ago
  You're counting a lot of generated code.
- d3vnull 1y ago
  QEMU has been in development for decades. I'll take the high level language developed solution that I can use now over a low level language version that would reach feature parity with this 10 years from now. Speed of development is a feature.
dangus 1y ago
I hope you slept well in your cryo-chamber, Austin Powers. It’s the year 2025, 6GB of RAM is not a lot. A stick of 32GB of RAM costs about $50. Most simple telephones come with 8GB of RAM.
- eviks 1y ago
  Are you going to host this app on a simple telephone?
  - dangus 1y ago
    You get my point. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that replacing a massively scaled $100+/year photo/video hosting service offered by the biggest multinational companies in the world will consume compute resources. You are either consuming your own server’s resources or you’re paying Apple/Google/someone else to handle it for you.
    - eviks 1y ago
      Your mistaken point is easy to get, but you don't get the counter argument that the relevant pricing here is that of, for example, VPS, which haven't scaled as much in memory availability as your cited consumer examples, so the constraints are still there. > will consume compute resources This is an empty statement, the argument here is about the amount of resources and how it relates to the underlying technology. And all this "biggest multinational scale" is just as meaningless, no specific resource requirement follows from that (maybe a big part of that $100 is exactly because of "big multi scale") > News flash, when you query ChatGPT, News flash, this is not chatGPT. Another news is that different models have very different memory requirements. Also, do you know that those requirements are only due to the models? So again, your example doesn't help provide any justification.
    - izacus 1y ago
      It comes as a surprise because there's products that do the same with massively lower resources.
- 1y ago

frenkel 1y ago

Because it wants to recognize objects in you images.

fifafu 1y ago

If you just need an image storage solution: no, but then you don't need Immich. If you want the feature Immich offers: yes

tim-kt 1y ago

The last time I tried Immich (a year ago or so), my impression was that Immich tries to imitate Google Photos as much as possible. This includes features such as searching by a person or by "cat", which requires some machine learning sophistication, which is done locally (you can also disable these features). This would be my guess, but I'm not entirely sure.

d3vnull 1y ago

Because it's not just an "image storage solution". A thumb drive would be an image storage solution. If you're indexing, making geo queries, serving over the network, categorize, transcode video and everything else that's needed to create a google photos competitor, you're going to need the hardware to back it up.

darkwater 1y ago

Because it is written in Node, it uses several other softwares (i.e. Postgresql), it runs image/video processing on the fly (transcoding to various formats depending on what you upload and who views), it does face/object recognition running a local model and a few other nice features that yeah, require more power. It's not a static HTML of your photos.

abdusco 1y ago

You can turn off AI features. You won't need as much RAM, then.

diimdeep 1y ago

It is ridiculous bloat of "high level technobabble" npm install for web/ server/ % cloc . 81808 text files. 51415 unique files. Language files blank comment code --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- JavaScript 25050 453101 913671 4436663 TypeScript 14997 85346 630503 831318 JSON 2238 168 0 457435 Perl 233 10541 34463 293957 Markdown 1977 89859 1551 234399 Dart 1257 24152 14748 229937 Svelte 678 5917 190 51223 HTML 128 16361 90 31719 ... --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 51415 713200 1617503 6726009 In comparison, qemu does emulation of literally every hardware that there is and it is only 1/3 more code, and it is without counting code required to run nodejs, docker, postgresql, redis that is dependencies of this image catalogue software. qemu-10.1.0 % cloc . 58961 text files. 43347 unique files. Language files blank comment code --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C 18063 1068616 1312988 5590243 C/C++ Header 13980 366138 907350 1774239 Assembly 1370 42839 55872 320027 Python 1345 67483 89294 255732 SUM: 43347 1789003 2759752 9220521 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

bo0tzz 1y ago
You're counting a lot of generated code.
d3vnull 1y ago
QEMU has been in development for decades. I'll take the high level language developed solution that I can use now over a low level language version that would reach feature parity with this 10 years from now. Speed of development is a feature.

dangus 1y ago

I hope you slept well in your cryo-chamber, Austin Powers. It’s the year 2025, 6GB of RAM is not a lot. A stick of 32GB of RAM costs about $50. Most simple telephones come with 8GB of RAM.

eviks 1y ago
Are you going to host this app on a simple telephone?
- dangus 1y ago
  You get my point. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that replacing a massively scaled $100+/year photo/video hosting service offered by the biggest multinational companies in the world will consume compute resources. You are either consuming your own server’s resources or you’re paying Apple/Google/someone else to handle it for you.
  - eviks 1y ago
    Your mistaken point is easy to get, but you don't get the counter argument that the relevant pricing here is that of, for example, VPS, which haven't scaled as much in memory availability as your cited consumer examples, so the constraints are still there. > will consume compute resources This is an empty statement, the argument here is about the amount of resources and how it relates to the underlying technology. And all this "biggest multinational scale" is just as meaningless, no specific resource requirement follows from that (maybe a big part of that $100 is exactly because of "big multi scale") > News flash, when you query ChatGPT, News flash, this is not chatGPT. Another news is that different models have very different memory requirements. Also, do you know that those requirements are only due to the models? So again, your example doesn't help provide any justification.
  - izacus 1y ago
    It comes as a surprise because there's products that do the same with massively lower resources.
1y ago