"remembering" in recursion



Hi

Is there a way to tell Maxima to automatically
remember previously computed recursive steps
in order to speed up computations?


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I also have a question on the quantity of available memory.
If Maxima is used, say, with gcl, how do I get Maxima to
see all the available memory (in my case 2 Gbytes).
Is this a Lisp restriction?
Should I configure gcl in oder to get the whole ram in Maxima? 
Could someone describe how to do that with gcl or any other lisp?

   Thanks

   Fabrizio