[Rd] R 2.14.1 memory management under Windows

[Spencer Graves]

I computed "system.time(diag(30000))" with R 2.12.0 on Fedora 13 Linux 
with 4 GB RAM and with R 2.14.1 on Windows 7 with 8 GB RAM:


Linux (4 GB RAM):  0, 0.21, 0.21 -- a fifth of a second


Windows 7 (8 GB RAM):  11.37 7.47 93.19 -- over 1.5 minutes.  Moreover, 
during most of that time, I could not switch windows or get any response 
from the system.  When I first encountered this, I thought Windows was 
hung permanently and the only way out was a hard reset and reboot.


       On both systems, diag(30000) generated, "Error:  cannot allocate 
vector of size ___ Gb", with "___" = 3.4 for Linux with 4 GB RAM and 6.7 
for Windows with 8 GB RAM.  Linux with half the RAM and an older version 
of R was done with this in 0.21 seconds.  Windows 7 went into suspension 
for over 93 seconds -- 1.5 minutes before giving an error message.


        I don't know how easy this would be to fix under Windows, but I 
felt a need to report it.


       Best Wishes,
       Spencer


-- 
Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Technology Officer
Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
751 Emerson Ct.
San José, CA 95126
ph:  408-655-4567
web:  www.structuremonitoring.com