[R] Windows R 1.8.0 hangs when Mem Usage >1.8GB

[Duncan Murdoch]

On Wed, 19 Nov 2003 10:20:16 -0800 (PST), Dick Beyer
<dbeyer at u.washington.edu> wrote :

>I have a loop that increases the size of an object after each iteration.  When the Windows Task Manager shows "Mem Usage" about 1.8GB, the Rgui.exe process no longer responds.
>
>I use:
>
>"C:\Program Files\R\rw1080\bin\Rgui.exe" --max-mem-size=4000M --min-vsize=10M --max-vsize=3000M --min-nsize=500k --max-nsize=1000M
>
>I have a dual Xeon 2.8GHz processor box with 4GB of memory and "R version 1.8.0, 2003-10-08".
>
>Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Normally the maximum memory allowed for any process in Windows is 2
GB.  It's possible to raise that to 3 GB but R 1.8 doesn't know how,
so that's an absolute upper limit.  Version 1.9 may be able to go up
to 3 GB, but beyond that you'll probably need a 64 bit processor:  as
far as I know all the 32 bit OS's limit each process to 2 or 3 GB,
because they reserve 1 or 2 GB for themselves.

I don't know why you're hitting the ceiling at 1.8 GB, but it may be
that there's unreported overhead.  I also don't know why it's not
failing gracefully.  

My only suggestion is to say "Don't do that".

Duncan Murdoch