[R] memory tops out at 1.84gb on OS X 10.4 machine w/ 5GB ram

[Roger D. Peng]

I'm not completely sure, but I don't think OS X is at the point yet where it can 
access > 2GB of memory (like, for example, Linux on Opteron).  More 
specifically, I'm not sure a single process image can access > 2GB of memory, 
but I'd welcome any corrections to that statement.  To be sure, this problem is 
not an issue with R because R has regularly been reported to access u> 4GB of 
memory when the OS allows it.

-roger

Ken Termiso wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I am on 10.4 with R2.2, and when 
> loading a big text file (~500MB) with scan(file, what=character) I am 
> throwing malloc errors that say I am out of memory...I have 5GB on this 
> machine, and Activity Monitor tells me R is only up to ~1.84GB both times 
> this has happened (running from terminal)...
> 
> I am wondering why this is happening when I still have >2GB of free memory 
> waiting to be used...?
> 
> Any advice would be much obliged,
> Ken
> 
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-- 
Roger D. Peng  |  http://www.biostat.jhsph.edu/~rpeng/