White Paper MEMORY ALLOCATION ON CATIA V5 © Dassault Systèmes 3DS.COM © Dassault Systèmes 3DS.COM Version 1.0 – 3/1/2014 Written by: Anshuman Wakankar Validated by: NA Edited by: Anne Marie Miller White Paper Executive Summary The administration of CAD/CAM systems is an important part of the overall ability to keep your workstations effective in delivering high performance. This paper covers some information dealing with the performance of CATIA V5, with specific interests in memory management when working with large data files. This paper is intended for users who want to understand what affects CATIA V5 performance and what can be done to improve it. Having CATIA run with the highest performance available allows the end user to be most efficient. This paper provides information used to resolve memory allocation problems when working with large data files. © Dassault Systèmes 3DS.COM 2 White Paper Contents 1. Part 1 - General Information ........................................................................................... 4 1.1. Classification of Main Memory issues ............................................................................ 4 1.2. Random Access Memory ............................................................................................... 4 1.3. Virtual Memory ............................................................................................................... 4 1.4. Disk ................................................................................................................................ 4 1.5. Application ..................................................................................................................... 5 2. System Memory ............................................................................................................. 6 2.1. Memory allocation for CATIA V5 .................................................................................... 7 2.2. Memory Allocation by RAM ............................................................................................ 8 2.3. Memory Allocation by Virtual Memory .......................................................................... 10 2.4. Memory Allocation methods (Paging/swapping) ........................................................... 11 2.4.1. Swapping .............................................................................................................. 11 2.4.2. Paging .................................................................................................................. 11 3. Memory Monitoring Tools and Commands ................................................................... 13 4. Parameters to monitor.................................................................................................. 15 5. Part 2 - Memory Allocation Diagnosis .......................................................................... 16 5.1. Physical Memory limit reached ..................................................................................... 16 © Dassault Systèmes 5.2. Swap Activity ............................................................................................................... 19 5.3. Disk limit reached ......................................................................................................... 20 3DS.COM 6. Part 3. Best practices ................................................................................................... 21 6.1. Memory limit reached ................................................................................................... 21 6.2. Swap ............................................................................................................................ 22 6.3. Disk full ........................................................................................................................ 22 6.4. General CATIA practices for less Memory ................................................................... 23 6.4.1. Display .................................................................................................................. 23 6.4.2. Loading ................................................................................................................. 24 6.4.3. Search order ......................................................................................................... 24 6.4.4. Update .................................................................................................................. 24 6.4.5. Libraries ................................................................................................................ 24 6.4.6. Design Methodology ............................................................................................. 25 6.4.7. CATIA Design methods for Memory Benefits ........................................................ 25 7. Related Documentation ................................................................................................ 27 8. Document History ........................................................................................................ 27 White Paper 1. Part 1 - General Information 1.1. Classification of Main Memory issues Users while working with big data often face memory problems. This can be due to low system configuration, Operating System or wrong application settings. One can broadly classify memory issues into the following types: 1.2. Random Access Memory Random Access Memory (usually known by its acronym, RAM) is a form of computer data storage. Today it takes the form of integrated circuits that allow the stored data to be accessed in any order (i.e., at random). The word random refers to the fact that any piece of data can be returned in a constant time, regardless of its physical location and whether or not it is related to the previous piece of data. RAM is also called as Physical Memory or Main Memory. The more there is RAM, the more is the memory available. Hence a machine with 1 GB RAM has less physical memory than a machine with 2 GB RAM. However, increasing RAM would come at some cost. 1.3. Virtual Memory © Dassault Systèmes Virtual memory is actually the sum of RAM memory and the Virtual Space defined on Hard Disk. 3DS.COM Physical memory is a finite resource on a computer system. Only a certain number of processes can run with predefined physical memory at a time, though many more processes may actually be ready to run or execute. Swapping is a useful technique that enables a computer to execute programs and manipulate data files larger than main memory (RAM). The operating system copies as much data as possible into main memory, and leaves the rest on the disk. When the operating system needs data from the disk, it exchanges a portion of data (called a page or segment) in main memory with a portion of data on the disk. Swapping is often called paging or Virtual memory. 1.4. Disk This is the Hard Disk capacity of the machines. If the hard disk is fragmented into number of drives then each drive capacity would in turn restricts the data size to be stored into it. 4 White Paper 1.5. Application RAM, Memory Swap or Disk space depend on either hardware or Operating system. Modifying the system hardware is one way to overcome the memory problem. Another way is from the application itself. Any application or process requires memory. This memory demand could be controlled by application settings. © Dassault Systèmes 3DS.COM 5 White Paper 2. System Memory Whenever application is started, the application demands memory to the Operating System. So if CATIA is started, CATIA internally calculates the minimum amount of memory required to run the application (Say X MB) and requests the same to OS. OS now approaches the RAM and checks of the available free memory and its location. Once the required amount of memory is made available to CATIA, CATIA application is launched and can be worked on. By doing so X MB of memory of RAM is now blocked by CATIA. Following figure will be helpful to understand the memory allocation process Memory Request © Dassault Systèmes Operating System 3DS.COM Phase 2 RAM USER Hard Disk 6 White Paper 2.1. Memory allocation for CATIA V5 Every Operating System allocates specific amount memory for any process. The amount of this default memory depends on Operating System and can be different following the Operating System. Following table shows memory locatable to CATIA V5 CNEXT process as per different Operating Systems and addition memory that can be allocated by customization Default Additional Total Memory Memory Memory Operating System Allocated for allocation to allocation to any process CATIA V5 CATIA V5 Microsoft Windows XP 2 GB 1 GB 3 GB IBM AIX 1 GB 1 GB 2 GB 32bit Application Hewlett-Packard HP-UX 1.9 GB 1.1 GB 3 GB on 32bit OS SUN SOLARIS 4 GB None 4 GB SGI IRIX (Supported only 2 GB None 2 GB till V5R17) Microsoft Windows XP 2 GB 2 GB 4 GB © Dassault Systèmes 32 bit IBM AIX 1 GB 1.25 GB 2.25 GB Application 3DS.COM Hewlett-Packard HP-UX NA NA NA on 64bit OS SUN SOLARIS NA NA NA SGI IRIX NA NA NA Microsoft Windows XP 8 TB* None 8 TB* 64 bit IBM AIX (RS6000) 16 TB* None 16 TB* Application Hewlett-Packard HP-UX NA NA NA on 64bit OS SUN SOLARIS NA NA NA SGI IRIX NA NA NA NA: Not Applicable – CATIA is not available on these OS platforms * - There are theoretical limits. On 64 bit, the memory limit is equal to sum of RAM + swap space. 7 White Paper In order to allocate additional Memory, extra tunings are required in the following areas: From an operating system standpoint From