[Numpy-discussion] memory usage

[Robert Kern]

On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 17:02, emil <sidky at uchicago.edu> wrote:
> Hi,
>   I'm having a problem with my python code, using numpy, chewing up too
> much memory.
> In the following, I boiled down my program to the simplest example that
> has the problem:
>
> from numpy import *
> for i in range(1000):
>   a = random.randn(512**2)
>   b = a.argsort(kind='quick')
>
> This loop takes a couple of minutes to run on my machine.
> While running 'top' concurrently, I see that the memory usage is
> increasing as the loop progresses. By the time the loop is finished
> the python process is taking over 30% of the memory, and I have 8 GB RAM.
>
> Is there some way to prevent this from happening?
> It's fine if the alternative slows the code down a bit.
> Im'm using python2.4 and numpy 1.0.1

Can you try upgrading to numpy 1.2.0? On my machine with numpy 1.2.0
on OS X, the memory usage is stable.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless
enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as
though it had an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco