available physical memory lower than total

The amount of physical storage space on the system allocated for memory. The major factors that can cause a request to fail include: When a process requests memory from the operating system, various factors determine if the request will be successful or not. This is a particularly useful Help Article for users wondering why on 32-bit Windows they get system 'Unable to allocate memory' errors after calls to initialize single IDL arrays requiring 1GB to 2GB of storage space.

While focused on the Windows operating system, most of the issues described here relate to any modern operating system. This document outlines some of the limitations affecting memory allocation and how they are related to IDL. As a result of this hardware environment, users are attempting to access large areas of contiguous memory in IDL, but failing for various reasons. While not unthinkable only a few years ago, tumbling memory prices and increasing hard drive capacities have presented PC users the ability to acquire gigabytes of memory at relativity low cost.

Available physical memory lower than total