Re: [Swarm-Support] Re: [Swarm-Modelling] xmalloc problem

[Steve Railsback]

Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

> Steve Railsback wrote:
>
> > If you are running under Cygwin in Windows, we found a help page that 
> > shows how to increase the system's limit on how much memory Cygwin can 
> > allocate. It seems likely that this would solve the xmalloc error, if 
> > it occurs when you have not yet used up ALL your system's memory. We 
> > haven't tested this trick yet.
>
>
> The xmalloc things means you are either using or leaking memory like 
> crazy.   Increasing the amount of memory may delay the crash (perhaps 
> enough), but keep in mind that the more you allocate past your physical 
> RAM, the more will be hitting disk and slowing everything down.

Right, but: We (and apparently some others) find this xmalloc problem 
with a variety of codes that do not leak memory a lot and work fine 
until we either (a) simulate a lot more agents, or (b) run the program 
for a really long time. Then we get the xmalloc error while there is 
plenty of unused RAM, and in fact when RAM use is steady, not increasing 
consistently (according to the Windows performance monitor).

The problem does not occur in Linux, indicating that it is caused by a 
Windows or Cygwin limit on the total memory a program can allocate.

Steve
--
Lang Railsback & Associates
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