st: Re: Cannot allocate more than 779 MB to STATA11

[Quantitative Decisions <whuber@quantdec.com>]

Roland Andersson inquires,
> I have win XP 32 bit and 2 MB of memory.
>
> With Stata9 I can allocate 1200 MB of memory but with Stata9 only 770 MB. 
> This is a significant difference. I often needed 850-900 MB of memory in 
> my analyses, but can not do this with Stata11.
> ...
> I think Stata should inform customers about the larger program overhead in 
> Stata11 that decreases the amount of memory that can be allocated.

(Please forgive me if this has been addressed--I receive the digest which 
is a little untimely.)

Having just upgraded from 8.2/SE to 11.0/IC on a similar system, I find 
little difference in overhead.  For example, Windows Task Manager currently 
reports an overhead of less than 11 MB just after startup, net of its 
memory allocation.  With 1.11 GB memory in use by the OS and other 
processes (e.g., Mathematica is currently sitting on 400 MB), Stata is 
still able to claim a 925 MB chunk: in effect, all of the remainder.  I can 
allocate and deallocate memory repeatedly (set mem 925m / set mem 1m) and 
Stata's net "footprint" (VM Size in the Task Manager) does not grow, 
indicating no memory leak.

Therefore, I find no evidence that recent versions of Stata consume 
significantly more overhead.  Most likely some other process has claimed 
some RAM.  The solution is to reboot, log on, start Task Manager, sort the 
processes by VM Size, see what's going on, free up RAM if necessary, and 
check how much Stata can then allocate.

Best,

Bill Huber
Quantitative Decisions

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