64 bit memory usage

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Wed, 8 Dec 2010 14:44:30 +0000
Rob Randall <rob.randall2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am trying to understand how much memory is available to a 64 bit python
> process running under Windows XP 64 bit.
> 
> When I run tests just creating a series of large dictionaries containing
> string keys and float values I do not seem to be able to grow the process
> beyond the amount of RAM present.
> 
> For example, on a box with 2GB RAM and 3 GB pagefile the process stalls at
> around 2GB.
> 
> On another machine with 16GB RAM and 24GB pagefile the process stalls at
> 16GB.

How is it surprising? When you go past the available RAM, your process
starts swapping and everything becomes incredibly slower.

Regards

Antoine.