Breaking the 4GB barrier with Pharo 6 64-bit

OK, I am quite excited about the future possibilities of 64-bit Pharo. So I played a bit more with the current test version [1], trying to push the limits. In the past, it was only possible to safely allocate about 1.5GB of memory even though a 32-bit process’ limit is theoretically 4GB (the OS and the VM need space too).

Allocating a couple of 1GB ByteArrays is one way to push memory use, but it feels a bit silly. So I loaded a bunch of projects (including Seaside) to push the class/method counts (7K classes, 100K methods) and wrote a script [2] that basically copies part of the class/method metadata including 2 copies of each’s methods source code as well as its AST (bypassing the cache of course). This feels more like a real object graph.
I had to create no less than 7 (SEVEN) copies (each kept open in an inspector) to break through the mythical 4GB limit (real allocated & used memory).
Screen Shot 2016-11-09 at 11.25.28.png

I also have the impression that the image shrinking problem is gone (closing everything frees memory, saving the image has it return to its original size, 100MB in this case).
Great work, thank you. Bright future again.
Sven
PS: Yes, GC is slower; No, I did not yet try to save such a large image.
[1]
[2]
| meta |
ASTCache reset.
meta := Dictionary new.
Smalltalk allClassesAndTraits do: [ :each | | classMeta methods |
  (classMeta := Dictionary new)
    at: #name put: each name asSymbol;
    at: #comment put: each comment;
    at: #definition put: each definition;
    at: #object put: each.
  methods := Dictionary new.
  classMeta at: #methods put: methods.
  each methodsDo: [ :method | | methodMeta |
    (methodMeta := Dictionary new)
      at: #name put: method selector;
      at: #source put: method sourceCode;
      at: #ast put: method ast;
      at: #args put: method argumentNames asArray;
      at: #formatted put: method ast formattedCode;
      at: #comment put: (method comment ifNotNil: [ :str | str withoutQuoting ]);
      at: #object put: method.
    methods at: method selector put: methodMeta ].
  meta at: each name asSymbol put: classMeta ].
meta.




Sven Van Caekenberghe
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