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macOS Is there a 32GB virtual memory limit in OSX?

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omvs

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 15, 2011
495
20
Does OSX have a hardcoded limit of 32GB virtual memory per task? I have a cad program (glade) that I'm trying to load a very large design into, and it seems to be crashing at ~32GB.

If this is a known limitation, is there a way to workaround this besides running another OS (linux, etc)?

Not exactly a programming question (though I could probably rebuild the tool from the source code if I had to), but I suspect I'm more likely to get the right eyeballs here....

Thx,
 
robvas

robvas

macrumors 68040
Mar 29, 2009
3,240
629
USA
omvs said:
Does OSX have a hardcoded limit of 32GB virtual memory per task? I have a cad program (glade) that I'm trying to load a very large design into, and it seems to be crashing at ~32GB.

If this is a known limitation, is there a way to workaround this besides running another OS (linux, etc)?
Click to expand...
32GB is not the limit. I have seen a memory leak consume all 8GB of RAM and all the free space on a 256GB SSD, in a 13" Air right out of the packaging (iCloud contacts sync bung). You may be hitting some other limit, like stack size. How much free disk space do you have? If you run 'ulimit -a' at the terminal you should see some information:

Code: 
$ uname -a
Darwin Rocket.local 12.4.0 Darwin Kernel Version 12.4.0: Wed May  1 17:57:12 PDT 2013; root:xnu-2050.24.15~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
$ ulimit -a
core file size          (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size           (kbytes, -d) unlimited
file size               (blocks, -f) unlimited
max locked memory       (kbytes, -l) unlimited
max memory size         (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files                      (-n) 256
pipe size            (512 bytes, -p) 1
stack size              (kbytes, -s) 8192
cpu time               (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes              (-u) 709
virtual memory          (kbytes, -v) unlimited
 
S

subsonix

macrumors 68040
Feb 2, 2008
3,551
79
The first suspect is Glade I would think, perhaps you could try on a Glade specific forum and see what that turns up. Also, are you sure you have ~32GB of available memory?
 
O

omvs

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 15, 2011
495
20
Interesting info - thanks to all.

I do have a boatload of disk space, and the crash happened right around 32G of virtual memory (watching it in Activity Monitor). That made me wonder about a 32G limit in the os, plus I thought I had read something about this months ago, but couldn't not find anything using google. Physical memory I only have 24G right now (my 4th 8GB SODIMM is bad and being replaced).

Last night I did manage to read the updated design in and it succeeded using 31.8GB. Hopefully thats good enough -- this is just for a backup plan if I need to view the design while our work computers are being moved from one site to another.
 
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