Did you read the *rest* of what the rw-FAQ says? Be aware though that Windows has (in most versions) a maximum amount of user virtual memory of 2Gb, and parts of this can be reserved by processes but not used. The version of the memory manager used from R 1.9.0 allocates large objects in their own memory areas and so is better able to make use of fragmented virtual memory than that used previously.
R can be compiled to use a different memory manager which might be better at using large amounts of memory, but is substantially slower (making R several times slower on some tasks). So, it tells you about memory fragmentation, and it tells you about making R aware of large-memory versions of Windows and that an alternative memory manager can be used. If you actually tried those, the posting guide asks you to indicate it, so I presume you did not. Also, take seriously the idea of using a more capable operating system that is better able to manage 2Gb of RAM. On Tue, 14 Sep 2004, Christoph Lehmann wrote: > I have (still) some memory problems, when trying to allocate a huge array: > > WinXP pro, with 2G RAM > > I start R by calling: > > Rgui.exe --max-mem-size=2Gb (as pointed out in R for windows FAQ) > > R.Version(): i386-pc-mingw32, 9.1, 21.6.2004 > > ## and here the problem > x.dim <- 46 > y.dim <- 58 > slices <- 40 > volumes <- 1040 > a <- rep(0, x.dim * y.dim * slices * volumes) > dim(a) <- c(x.dim, y.dim, slices, volumes) > > gives me: "Error: cannot allocate vector of size 850425 Kb" > > even though > > memory.limit(size = NA) > yields 2147483648 > > and > > memory.size() > gives 905838768 > > so why is that and what can I do against it? > > Many thanks for your kind help > > Cheers > > Christoph > > -- Brian D. Ripley, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595 ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
