[Ecls-list] Fwd: [Maxima-lang-fr] Probleme de mémoire

[Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll]

On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 3:05 AM, Robert Dodier<robert.dodier at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/27/09, Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll
> <juanjose.garciaripoll at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> This should be easily done from Maxima typing
>>    :lisp (ext:set-limit 'ext:heap-size (* 1024 1024 1024))
>
> Hmm, I'd like to make the heap size bigger by default in Maxima,
> but I don't know how to match the heap size to the available
> physical memory. Is it OK to make the default heap size
> bigger than available memory? Should the heap size be only
> some fixed fraction (1/2 ? 1/3 ? something else?) of physical
> memory? I can put #+ecl (ext:set-limit ...) in Maxima's initialization
> code, but I don't know what size to tell it.

There is no universal recipe. I believe setting the limit to 0 will
simply ignore the ECL value and let the garbage collector grow and
grow until it exhausts all memory and hits the OS limits.  On some
platforms you will be able to allocate a lot more than the available
memory, as in Linux. On some of those, exceeding the limits may lead
to a total breakdown of the program in unexpected ways. ECL reserves
some extra memory that it will try to free and use when hitting those
limits, but THAT error can NOT be ignored, for the Common Lisp image
will have reached a critical status in which it is not able to
allocate any more objects.

Juanjo


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