topic Re: SAS insufficient memory error in SAS Programming

SAS insufficient memory error

aarony — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 02:05:32 GMT

Just had a quick question regarding SAS. When I run firm/year fixed regression, I get:

ERROR: The SAS System stopped processing this step because of insufficient memory.

I do have 1800+ firms, but is this because my computer’s memory is not big enough?

Re: SAS insufficient memory error

Reeza — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 03:08:16 GMT

Or the settings. What proc are you running?

You can look at the memsize option to see what it's set at and if you can increase it to avoid the problem.

SAS(R) 9.2 Companion for Windows, Second Edition

Re: SAS insufficient memory error

aarony — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 03:10:57 GMT

i am running

proc surveyreg data=m11; cluster cusip; .....

with cluster at firm level.

Re: SAS insufficient memory error

Reeza — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 03:38:55 GMT

I'd try the memsize option.

options memsize=max;

Re: SAS insufficient memory error

Kurt_Bremser — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 06:41:48 GMT

There are several possible limitations coming into play

- physical RAM, most often not the culprit

- memory layout of the OS, including swap/paging space

- user specific limits imposed by the OS; caution: with a workspace server, these are (may be) inherited from the user running the object spawner!

- SAS settings: config files or command line

You will have to check these, most likely the solution is in #4 or #3

Re: SAS insufficient memory error

jakarman — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 06:48:46 GMT

At windows (destktop) by default SAS is, should be, allowed to used all memory present in the desktop.

SAS(R) 9.4 Companion for Windows, Third Edition The only place it can be changed as at startup (sas-config or parameter sas-script)

At servers it is usual to have limits set to allow it as multi-user processing with a lot of processes. A server can have 256Gb or 2Tb of internal memory 64 cores where your desktop is coming with 8 of may be 16 using 8 cores. Sometimes with VDI your Windows session is stripped to less than 3Gb with a single core. This is according the IT dogma that users do not run heavy processes.

With sas you can see your memory settings and usage.

There are more memory options like SAS(R) 9.4 Companion for Windows, Third Edition (maxmemquery) setting a s size of allocation blocks.

proc options group=memory Base SAS(R) 9.4 Procedures Guide, Third Edition will give your sas settings.

What is your hardware configuration? You SAS version