[R] Memory capacity question for a specific situation

[Uwe Ligges]

On 20.05.2011 15:33, Dimitri Liakhovitski wrote:
> Hello!
>
> I am trying to figure out if my latest R for 64 bits on a 64-bit
> Windows 7 PC, RAM = 6 GB could read in a dataset with:
>
> ~64 million rows
> ~30 columns about half of which contain integers (between 1 and 3
> digits) and half - numeric data (tens to thousands).
>
> Or is it too much data?
> And even if it could read it in - will there be any memory left to
> conduct, for example, cluster analysis on that data set...


Let us ask R:

 > 64e6 * (15*8 + 15*4)
[1] 1.152e+10

That means you will need roughly 12 GB to store the data in memory. To 
work with the data, you should have at least 3 times the amount of 
memory available. Hence a 32 GB machine is a minimal requirement if you 
cannot restrict yourself to less observations or variables.

Uwe Ligges


>
> Thanks a lot!
>