Re: st: Stata and memory use under linux (Off topic)

[Russell Dimond <rdimond@ssc.wisc.edu>]

I think you nailed it--your job is computationally intensive.

Stata cannot benefit from more memory than it actually needs. Back in 
the day, Stata often needed what was at that point a lot of RAM, which 
is probably where you got the impression that RAM was a bottleneck. But 
the amount of RAM installed in a typical computer increased far more 
quickly that the size of the typical data set, so that's much less 
likely to be an issue now.

When it comes to making computations, it's the CPU speed that matters 
not the RAM. Sounds like your job is doing just fine to me.

Russell Dimond
Research Computing Specialist
Social Science Computing Cooperative
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Guillaume Frechette wrote:

> Dear Statalisters who know about linux: I am running a long and 
> computationaly intensive do file in Stata (it uses gllamm). When I use 
> the top or ps commands I notice that 99% of cpu usage is dedicated to 
> stata but only 0.9% of memory. Am I doing something wrong? Does that 
> mean the cpu is the bottleneck (I thought RAM was more often than not 
> the bottleneck)?
>
> Thanks,
>
> g
>
>
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