Re: "No more memory available" -- a recurring problem
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg68388] Re: [mg68356] "No more memory available" -- a recurring problem
- From: János <janos.lobb at yale.edu>
- Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2006 06:07:20 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <200608020924.FAA28575@smc.vnet.net> <D6C89613-F0EB-4D7E-9E29-2FFAA6FB40D4@yale.edu> <321730f50608021216o11d69435g5d278a6b7d06dfa5@mail.gmail.com>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Charlie, Your MacBook Pro has an Intel core duo processor and looks to me that Mathematica is using just one of the cores. I do not know what You can do about it. Probably nothing. If you can put your hand on a Personal Grid edition that would engage the second core more vigorously. I do not see that you have a memory problem as regarding the usage of the memory reported by top. You might have a bad memory chip and that is crashing your program. Unfortunately we see bad memory coming even from Apple these days with newer Macs. There is a service CD that came with your MacBook Pro. Try to run the memory test from it all night in a loop and see if it is caching anything. You might also want to do a hard drive check with Diskwarrior. Wooly disks can lead to wooly virtual memory and causing crashes. Look if you have anything in ~/Library/Logs/Crashreporter regarding Mathematica.crash.log or Mathkernel.cash.log. /I have plenty in mine for both :)/ If you find any, send them to support at wolfram.com and ask their opinion. I also recommend to do additional exhausting tests for the motherboard and other elements of the machine by using the service CD. In summary it looks like a hardware problem - unless you have other long running Mathematica programs which run just fine. With the best, János On Aug 2, 2006, at 3:16 PM, Charlie Brummitt wrote: > János, > > Thanks for the advice. I'm not really sure how to interpret the > information in the terminal window, so I have attached screenshots of > it at various stages (see the names of the images). I have attached > them in chronological order. > > It seems to me that Mathematica is only being allocated 50% of the CPU > and 100 megabytes of RAM! When I did the "top" on my 12" PowerBook, > 93% of the CPU was being used while Mathematica was running my code. > How do I change this on my 15" MacBook Pro? > > My 12" PowerBook is able to run this code overnight and very rarely > gives the "ran out of memory" error message. I would like to be able > to run my code overnight on my MacBook Pro, but it can only run for 5 > to 10 minutes before it runs out of memory and completely halts. Thus > I can't "set it and leave it"; instead, I must always be at my > computer to restart the calculation every 5 to 10 minutes. Any > suggestions? > > > Thanks for all your help, János. > > Charlie > > On 8/2/06, János <janos.lobb at yale.edu> wrote: >> >> On Aug 2, 2006, at 5:24 AM, Charlie Brummitt wrote: >> >> > I keep getting the following error message while running a search >> > of many PDE's: >> > >> > "No more memory available. >> > Mathematica kernel has shut down. >> > Try quitting other applications and then retry." >> > >> > This message is becoming so common that it is crippling my research >> > project, which is to find the simplest PDE with one quadratic >> > nonlinearity that is chaotic. >> > >> > I have Googled and searched the Mathgroup archives for help, and I >> > employed the following fixes: >> > >> > --CODE & SOFTWARE-- >> > 1) Share[] -- does not help because my code rarely has common >> elements >> > that Share[] could consolidate. >> > >> > 2) I used Module[] and made as many variables local as possible. I >> > eliminated extra variables and functions in addition to adding >> Clear[] >> > in several places in the code to clear variables that are no longer >> > needed. >> > >> > 3) I streamlined and optimized the code in general, and I made the >> > routines as simple and least data-intensive as possible. >> > >> > 4) I never have any other applications open when running >> Mathematica. >> > (Unfortunately, closing other applications is the only >> suggestion that >> > Mathematica provides in the "out of memory" error message.) >> > >> > 5) I should note that I run the latest version of Mathematica >> > (5.2.2.0). >> > >> > --HARDWARE-- >> > 1) I upgraded from a 12" PowerBook to a 15" MacBook Pro. This >> computer >> > has an 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo processor. >> > >> > 2) I upgraded the RAM on this new computer from 1 GB to 2 GB. >> > >> > 3) I now have much more free hard drive space (20 GB) in case >> > Mathematica needs to use virtual memory. In addition, this hard >> drive >> > is 7200 rpm versus the standard 5400 rpm. >> > >> > >> > I have been using functions like MemoryInUse[] and On >> [MemoryConserve] >> > to monitor the use of memory. I almost always find that I am only >> > using a few megabytes at a time (usually 5-10 MB, sometimes as >> high as >> > 100 or once 1000 after a large computation). However, despite >> finding >> > that I usually use only a few megabytes during my computations, I >> > often get the above "out of memory" error message, and I can never >> > figure out why and how much memory was needed in that particular >> > computation. >> > >> > >> > Some questions: >> > 1) How can I tell whether Mathematica is using virtual memory or >> not? >> > It seems to me that it is not. I have 20 GB of hard drive space >> free >> > and it never seems to use it. Why should I ever run out of >> memory if I >> > have 20 GB free in case it needs more memory than my RAM provides? >> > >> > 2) Is there a way to determine how much of my 2 GB of RAM are >> > allocated to Mathematica? Can I increase how much RAM >> Mathematica can >> > access? >> > >> > Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to provide! I >> greatly >> > appreciate it. If you need more information on my code or the >> > computations I am doing, I would be happy to provide it. >> > >> > Regards, >> > Charlie >> >> If you open a Terminal window on the side and type "top" and hit >> return and start up your application, what do You see for real memory >> usage for the kernel and the front end from top? >> >> János >> <before mathematica.jpeg> >> <mma loaded, code loaded, pre-execution.jpeg> >> <running1.jpeg> >> <running2.jpeg> >> <running3.jpeg> >> <running4.jpeg> >> <ran out of memory.jpeg>
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- "No more memory available" -- a recurring problem
- From: "Charlie Brummitt" <cbrummitt@wisc.edu>
- "No more memory available" -- a recurring problem