Out of memory error while using eye function.

Dear Sir/Madam, I am getting Out of memory error while allocating an array(214748 x 314748 x 4) of size 270366014016 bytes or 270G

 >> C=eye(214748,314748);
    Error using eye
    Out of memory. Type HELP MEMORY for your options

i have approx 500G memory on my 64 bit machine and i had >400G free when i was trying to allocate.

free -g
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           504         58        445          0          0         46
-/+ buffers/cache:         11        493
Swap:            7          0          7

Out of memory. Type HELP MEMORY for your options

ulimit -a
core file size          (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size           (kbytes, -d) unlimited
scheduling priority             (-e) 0
file size               (blocks, -f) unlimited
pending signals                 (-i) 4133744
max locked memory       (kbytes, -l) unlimited
max memory size         (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files                      (-n) 1024
pipe size            (512 bytes, -p) 8
POSIX message queues     (bytes, -q) 819200
real-time priority              (-r) 0
stack size              (kbytes, -s) unlimited
cpu time               (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes              (-u) 1024
virtual memory          (kbytes, -v) unlimited
file locks                      (-x) unlimited

Why this allocation failed?

Are there some default upper limits?

can i override them?

[Adam]

You have 500 GB of RAM on your machine??

[Stephen23]

@Adam: it seems a lot of people don't know the difference between memory (RAM) and drive size (hard-drive, SSD, tape, etc). But luckily the difference is easy to learn.

[John D'Errico]

But the use of eye for that large of a problem is not an issue of understanding the difference between disk space and RAM. It is understanding why one would ever want to do that, blindly applying a formula to a problem, with no recourse to common sense, with no recourse to the available tools, here sparse matrix tools.

Answer 1

[John D'Errico]

help speye

Answer 2

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

To get all information you need type

memory

[puneet singh]

this command does not work on my matlab (linux machine issues?)

[Stephen23]

memory doc says: "The memory function is available only on Microsoft® Windows® systems".