POV-Ray: Newsgroups: povray.beta-test: RC5 32 bit, not releasing memory on failure to load a large file.: Re: RC5 32 bit, not releasing memory on failure to load a large file.

POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.beta-test : RC5 32 bit, not releasing memory on failure to load a large file. : Re: RC5 32 bit, not releasing memory on failure to load a large file.		Server Time 20 May 2024 22:20:44 EDT (-0400)

From: Chris Cason
Date: 24 Apr 2012 11:32:24
Message: <4f96c788$1@news.povray.org>

On 25/04/2012 01:24, Stephen wrote:
> Task manager showed the memory usage going up when I tried to open the 
> file then stabilising. When I exited PovRay the memory usage went back 
> down to what it was before.

This isn't unusual for windows programs. When POV-Ray requests memory,
in some cases the request goes through the Visual C++ run-time
library, which then requests memory from Windows. If POV-Ray later
releases that memory, there is no guarantee that the RTL will then
hand it back to windows; there is a performance penalty to asking the
OS for memory so it is common for it to be retained in the heap
managed by the RTL.

This shouldn't be a problem as windows manages virtual memory
automatically and will page out RAM that the program has allocated but
isn't actively using (i.e. spare memory in the RTL's heap) if it needs
memory for something else.

That's not to say that the problem you observed isn't a bug; it could
very well be that the editor code didn't release the allocated memory
when it failed to load the file. I'd have to look further.

-- Chris

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