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stevo642
Obsidian | Level 7

Last week I got some help with allocating memory for very large IML arrays. The post got deleted by accident so I thought I'd repost to assist those trying to do that.


In short, IML 14.1 supports matrices with up to 231 elements on the Windows operating system.


I upgraded to 14.1 and have sufficient RAM but a simple "y = j(33000,33000,1);"  wasn't working for me.


IIRC, Rick Wicklin suggested adding "-MEMSIZE 12G" to the shortcut I start SAS with.


I went a little deeper and edited that configuration into my SASv9.CFG file and now I can allocate large arrays on my Win7 16GB RAM machine. Thanks, Rick!


Incidentally, this lets me run much larger Monty Hall simulations -- up to a quarter of a billion sims -- see attached code & results below based on Rick's "DO Loop" Monty Hall example -- and remember to "switch doors"!



proc iml;

t0 = time();

NumSim = 2.5e8;                             /* number of simulated games */

car = randfun(NumSim, "Table", {1 1 1}/3);  /* unknown door hides car */

guess = j(NumSim, 1, 1);                    /* WLOG, you guess door=1 */

show = choose(car=2, 3, 2);                 /* host shows you a goat --> if car behind 2 then 3 else 2 */

switch = choose(show=2, 3, 2);              /* the door you could switch to -- if host shows 2 then 3 else 2 */

winIfSwitch = mean(switch=car);             /* (P(win | switch) */

winIfStay = mean(guess=car);                /* (P(win | do not switch) */

elapsedTime = time() - t0;

print "Monty Hall: NumSim = " NumSim[format=comma12. label=EMPTY]  winIfStay[format=8.6 rowname="   p(WinIfStay)" label=EMPTY] winIfSwitch[format=8.6 rowname="   p(WinIfSwitch)" label=EMPTY]  "   Time in Seconds = " elapsedTime[format=4.1 label=EMPTY];

Monty Hall: NumSim =   250,000,000   p(WinIfStay) 0.333347   p(WinIfSwitch) 0.666653   Time in Seconds =  11.1
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SteveDenham
Jade | Level 19

Completely off topic-- @stevo642, how did you get access to 14.1?

Steve Denham

Rick_SAS
SAS Super FREQ

It was released last week!

Here's the What's New for the Analytical products: SAS 14.1 Documentation

And here's highlights: SAS Analytics: Highlights of 14.1, 13.2, 13.1, and 12.1 Releases

SteveDenham
Jade | Level 19

Hmm--I would have thought that there would have been a large splash headline on the Communities page...

Steve Denham

Rick_SAS
SAS Super FREQ

Wait for it...coming soon!

stevo642
Obsidian | Level 7

I got IML 14.1 when upgraded from 9.4 (TS1M1)  to  9.4 (TS1M3)

Rick_SAS
SAS Super FREQ

I wrote a blog post that describes this issue and the way to resolve it:

Large matrices in SAS/IML 14.1

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