"Fred Wolfe" <[email protected]> wrote:
> The maximum memory I can access with a Mac Pro 8 GB, OS 10.5 (Leopard)
> is 1625 MB (set mem 1625m) which actually allocates 1711 according to
> Stata.
I suspect the reason that Fred cannot allocate more than 1625 MB of memory is
because the default amount of memory he allocated to Stata is 1625 MB (perhaps
set earlier by -set memory 1625m, perm-). This is a perfectly reasonable
thing to do and on other platforms, you can allocate more memory (assuming you
have more available) after Stata has started up.
What's happening on the Mac GUI version is that after Stata allocates its big
block of memory during startup, the GUI is allocating some memory for itself
and actually fragmenting the available memory. Stata takes steps to prevent
this memory fragmentation from happening when it starts up (successfully on
other platforms) but can't prevent the Mac GUI from fragmenting the memory.
Note that the Mac console version does not have this problem.
The good news is that the problem is avoidable. First, set the default amount
of memory allocated to Stata to something much less than what's required
(-set memory 10m, perm-). If you want Stata to start up with 1625 MB
of memory (or even more), create a profile.do in
"~/Library/Application Support/Stata" containing the line
set memory 1625m
(or even -set memory 2200m-)
What will happen in this case is Stata will come up with the default small
memory allocation (set in an earlier invocation with -set memory 10m, perm-),
the GUI will be loaded, and then profile.do will be executed, at which point
the large memory allocation should succeed.
You now have your preferred large memory allocation and can still allocate
more to Stata later if you need it. The other users who were only able to
allocate roughly a gig of memory probably set Stata's default memory
allocation to a gig and need to take the same steps in preventing this
problem.
Note that there's still no guarantee that you can allocate 2200 MB at any time
to Stata (or at all) simply because the memory may not be available or
fragmented due to any number of reasons.
If you still have problems in allocating memory to Stata, feel free to contact
tech support for more help.
-Chinh Nguyen
[email protected]
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