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Garbage collection problem

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg51803] Garbage collection problem
  • From: D Herring <dherring at at.uiuc.dot.edu>
  • Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 02:06:06 -0500 (EST)
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

To anyone who can help me,

I've written a small simulator to model the system I'm studying.  It 
works nicely.  Now I'm wrapping that simulator in a set of Do[] loops to 
generate maps of its behavior.  Unfortunately, long runs quickly fill my 
512MB of RAM, even when dumping all my data to files as it is generated.

After a good bit of debugging, I have isolated (at least half of of) the 
memory problem to my use of a StoppingTest inside NDSolve.

Example:
(* Setup *)
eq={9.8*(0.99*Cos[qS[t]] + 0.01*Cos[qH[t] + qS[t]]) -
           0.01*Sin[qH[t]]*qH'[t]*qS'[t] -
           0.01*Sin[qH[t]]*
             qH'[t]*(qH'[t] + qS'[t]) + (0.001 + 0.01*Cos[qH[t]])*
             qH''[t] + (0.982 + 0.02*Cos[qH[t]])*qS''[t] == 0,
       0.1*Cos[qH[t] + qS[t]] + 0.01*Sin[qH[t]]*qS'[t]^2 +
           0.001*qH''[t] + (0.001 + 0.01*Cos[qH[t]])*qS''[t] == 0,
       qS[0] == 1.71,
       qS'[0] == -1.01,
        qH[0] == 2.84,
       qH'[0] == 1.1};
vars={qS[t], qH[t], qS'[t], qH'[t]};
test=qH[t] >= Pi &&
         2*Cos[qH[t]/2]*Cos[qH[t]/2 + qS[t]]*Sin[Pi/180] +
             Cos[Pi/180]*(Cos[qS[t]]*Sin[qH[t]] + (1 + Cos[qH[t]])*
                     Sin[qS[t]]) < -0.01 &&
         Cos[qH[t] + qS[t]]*
               Derivative[1][qH][t] + (Cos[qS[t]] + Cos[qH[t] + qS[t]])*
               Derivative[1][qS][t] < -0.01 || Abs[qH[t]] < Pi/6 ||
       Sin[qS[t]] < 1/4;
$HistoryLength=0;
(* end *)

(* example a *)
Do[
     soln=NDSolve[eq,vars,{t,0,2}][[1]];
     ,
     {20}];
MemoryInUse[]
(* end *)

(* example b *)
Do[
     soln=NDSolve[eq,vars,{t,0,2},StoppingTest->test][[1]];
     ,
     {20}];
MemoryInUse[]
(* end *)

To reproduce this, start a fresh kernel.  Execute the setup code, and 
then repeatedly run example a or b.  When I repeatedly run example a, 
MemoryInUse[] quickly converges to a constant value, as expected. 
However, each run of example b results in an increase in memory 
consumption.  Why?  How can I fix/avoid this behavior?  I stripped out 
some other logic, but all I really want are a few numbers from the last 
several "soln"s of each run, to observe convergence properties.

FWIW, I'm running on $Version=5.0 for Linux (November 18, 2003)

Thanks,
Daniel


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