[R] Memory limit problem

[Daniel Nordlund]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
> On Behalf Of David Winsemius
> Sent: Monday, October 11, 2010 10:07 PM
> To: Tim Clark
> Cc: r help r-help
> Subject: Re: [R] Memory limit problem
> 
> 
> On Oct 11, 2010, at 11:49 PM, Tim Clark wrote:
> 
> > Dear List,
> >
> > I am trying to plot bathymetry contours around the Hawaiian Islands
> > using the
> > package rgdal and PBSmapping.  I have run into a memory limit when
> > trying to
> > combine two fairly small objects using cbind().  I have increased
> > the memory to
> > 4GB, but am being told I can't allocate a vector of size 240 Kb.  I
> > am running R
> > 2.11.1 on a Dell Optiplex 760 with Windows XP.  I have pasted the
> > error message
> > and summaries of the objects below.  Thanks for your help.  Tim
> >
> >
> >>      xyz<-cbind(hi.to.utm,z=b.depth$z)
> > Error: cannot allocate vector of size 240 Kb
> 
> You have too much other "stuff".
> Try this:
> 
> getsizes <- function() {z <- sapply(ls(envir=globalenv()),
>                                  function(x) object.size(get(x)))
>                 (tmp <- as.matrix(rev(sort(z))[1:10]))}
> getsizes()
> 
> You will see a list of the largest objects in descending order. Then
> use rm() to clear out unneeded items.
> 
> --
> David,
> 
> >
> >> memory.limit()
> > [1] 4000
> 
> Seems unlikely that you really have that much space in that 32 bit OS.
<<<snip>>

Yeah, without performing some special incantations, Windows XP will not allocate more than 2GB of memory to any one process (e.g. R).  And even with those special incantations, at most you will get no more than about 3.2-3.5 GB.  The other thing to remember is that even if you had more than enough free space, R requires the free space for an object to be contiguous.  So if memory was fragmented and you didn't have 240KB of contiguous memory, it still couldn't allocate the vector.
 
Hope this is helpful,

Dan

Daniel Nordlund
Bothell, WA USA