Heap size and PermSize limitations

[Pierre Rehnberg]

Hello.

I'm not sure if this has been answered before, but I have searched for a couple of hours now and can't find the answer anywhere on the WorldWideWeb.

I'm having some strange behaviour trying to max out the memory used by, first of all Eclipse, but this goes for all java applications on my machine.

First some numbers:
Windows XP SP 3 32-bit
Intel Core2
3,25 GB RAM (Actually 4GB but since this is a 32bit OS...)
Sun JRE 1.6.0_22

Problem:
I'm trying to run Eclipse with 1024m Max heap size and MaxPermGen 512m, but for some reason I don't understand this is not possible.
There seems to be a magical limit at 1460 Mb of total memory allocated by java.

Some examples:
java.exe -Xmx1000m -XX:MaxPermSize=460m com.xxxxxx.export.Exporter
Error: Needs a view name as first parameter

java.exe -Xmx1000m -XX:MaxPermSize=461m com.xxxxxx.export.Exporter
Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not reserve enough space for object heap
Could not create the Java virtual machine.

java.exe -Xmx1001m -XX:MaxPermSize=460m com.xxxxxx.export.Exporter
Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not reserve enough space for object heap
Could not create the Java virtual machine.

java.exe -Xmx1001m -XX:MaxPermSize=461m com.xxxxxx.export.Exporter
Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not reserve enough space for object heap
Could not create the Java virtual machine.


Can somebody tell my why I get this behaviour and where I can read about it?

cheers

[Paul Sturrock]

There seems to be a magical limit at 1460 Mb of total memory allocated by java.

Not a Java limit, this is 32bit Windows behaviour. You can allococate a maximum of 2GB for a process, but Windows reserves some of that for its own purposes, plus the JVM needs memory above and beyond the heap for its own purposes, so the real limit is somewhere nearer 1.5Gb. There are various flags you can try to up this to the theoretical limit 3GB virtual, but these not really worth trying (very small increases for a lot of work).

If your application needs more memory then this, run it on linux or a 64bit JVM.

[Pierre Rehnberg]

Geeez

Paul, thanks for the quick answer.
Ok, a 64-bit OS is what I'll aim for then.

Thanks

[Campbell Ritchie]

And welcome to the Ranch

[prakash siva]

how to set java application heap size to 8GB in Ubuntu 64. also RAM 12 GB. is it possible to set ? if yes please tell the parameter?