Pre-calculating memory usage of repmat.m to avoid out of memory errors

A and B are equal length vectors of my data. The max value in A is 100 and the max value in B is 20,000 and n = 2,500. I wish to run the following code

n = length(A); % length(A) == length(B);
a = 1; b =1;
gridx1 = [1 : a : max(ceil(A))];
gridx2 = [1 : b : max(ceil(B))];
[gridx2,gridx1] = meshgrid(gridx2,gridx1);

x1 = repmat(gridx1, [1,1,n]);
x2 = repmat(gridx2, [1,1,n]);
mu1 = repmat(A,[length(gridx1),length(gridx2),1]);
mu2 = repmat(B,[length(gridx1),length(gridx2),1]);

However I get an out of memory error. Hence I need to reduce the sampling frequency of the grids.

Lets say I wish to allocate up to 3GB of RAM to this process, how can I find the sampling frequency, "a" and "b".

Obviously I wish to sample at the maximum frequency possible (subject to the 3GB constraint) to get the most accurate answer.

thank you

[Jan]

Isn't this a simple division? Do 3GB belong to one oy the arrays e.g. mu2, or is it the sum of all defined arrays?

[Jason Ross]

I'll state what I hope is pretty obvious: If you are regularly hitting "Out of memory" issues, you really should move to a 64-bit operating system. The hardware and operating systems have supported it for years now. Barring a few specialized use cases (generally related to hardware drivers), there is no downside to moving to a 64-bit operating system. RAM is also quite inexpensive, 16 GB can be had for less than $100, 24 GB less than $150, 32 GB less than $200 and even 64 GB is running ~$350. This, of course, assumes a desktop host with a motherboard that can take these types of chips.

Answer 1

[Matlab2010]

Thank you for your suggestions. very helpful.

I think the below script does want I need.

function testLimit()
%%3GB in bytes
maxLimit = 3 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024;

%%make some fake data
A = [1: 1: 100];
B = [1 : 200: 20E3];
n = length(A);
maxA = max(A);
maxB = max(B);
a=1; %lets keep this equal to one.

% Now calculate b
nom = (n*(maxB)^2 + 2*n*(maxA/a)^2*(maxB)^2);
denom = ((maxLimit / 64) - n*(maxA/a)^2);
b = sqrt(nom/ denom); %this is the sampling frequency of the grid

%%Now lets test the answer to make sure its ok
x1Size = n * (maxA / a)^2;
x2Size = n * (maxB / b)^2;
mu1Size = n  * (maxA / a)^2 * (maxB / b)^2;
mu2Size = mu1Size;

tot=64* sum([x1Size x2Size mu1Size mu2Size]);

if(tot>=(maxLimit+1))
    disp('too large')
else
    disp('fine')
end

end

Answer 2

[cr]

say, Lg1 is length(gridx1) and Lg2 is length(gridx2). Then your variables need this much memory x1: Lg1*Lg2*n*8 bytes (assuming you are using doubles), x2: Lg1*Lg2*n*8 bytes This is where the problem lies. Other not so big. Use singles or integer types if doubles are not necessary. Or, do your operations sequentially clearing intermediate variables.