> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rick Nooner [mailto:rick / nooner.net] 
> Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2005 3:01 PM
> To: ruby-talk ML
> Subject: Ruby on Unix vs. Windows
> 
> 
> Yesterday at work we took an analysis program written in ruby 
> that we had been running on a Solaris box (Sunblade 1500, 1 
> Gig RAM, 1.5 Ghz Sparc) and moved it to a windows box (HP 
> D530, 1 Gig RAM, 2.8 Ghz Pentium) to do performance comparisons.
> 
> The analysis builds a profile in memory of over 3.6 GB of 
> data on disk.  On the Solaris box, it takes about 35 mins and 
> uses about 700 MB of RAM.  It would not complete on the 
> windows box using the full data set, bombing with "failed to 
> allocate memory (NoMemoryError)".  There was nearly 800 MB of 
> RAM free on the windows box as well as having a 4 Gig swap available.
> 
> Is windows that inefficient with memory allocation or is this 
> a ruby implementation issue on windows?

I suspect mostly the latter, with a little bit of the former mixed in
for good measure.  I'm pretty sure the GC algorithm is different on
Windows, though I can't remember the details now.

Any chance you could show us the relevant code?  Maybe we could help you
with the memory footprint in general.

Regards,

Dan