[Pw_forum] Off-topic: memory usage issues

[Paolo Giannozzi]

On Apr 26, 2007, at 15:41 , Marcos Verissimo Alves wrote:

> looking at the memory usage using top, when running pw.x, I see that,
> although the memory from top is at most 250 MB per processor (from the
> part where the individual processes' cpu and memory usage is  
> displayed),
> almost the whole of physical memory is taken (from the "Mem: total,  
> used,
> free, buffers" line).

unix always uses the physical memory as much as possibile to store  
files,
buffers, temporary data and whatnot. For instance: if enough RAM is
available, "writing to file" will produce no physical writing (the  
data is
stored into memory) unless the file is closed or the unit flushed or the
memory reclaimed by some other process with higher priority

Paolo
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Paolo Giannozzi, Democritos and University of Udine, Italy