MPS issue job001152

TitleThe MPS can't be used to simulate a smaller machine
Statusopen
Priorityoptional
Assigned userGareth Rees
OrganizationRavenbrook
DescriptionDevelopers often work on powerful machines with lots of memory, but want to know how their software will perform on a more restricted machine. The MPS ought to be able to help with this assessment.
AnalysisI expect some of this is already possible by creating a limited size arena, but I'm not sure. There are two aspects to this: what happens to performance when, for example, the machine starts to page, but also what happens when allocation actually fails due to lack of resources. Both need to be simulated.

Some aspects of low memory behaviour can be test by setting a commit limit, and other aspects can be tested by using a client arena instead of a virtual memory arena.

GDR 2013-05-25: MMQA test function/120 [2] needs a feature like this. RB suggests that "ulimit -v" might do the trick (on Unix, anyway) but it doesn't seem to have any effect when I tried it.
How foundcustomer
Evidence[1] Raw notes from Configura workshop <http://info.ravenbrook.com/mail/2005/02/28/12-40-49/0.txt>.
[2] //info.ravenbrook.com/project/mps/master/test/function/120.c
Observed in1.105.0
Created byRichard Brooksby
Created on2005-03-09 18:21:16
Last modified byGareth Rees
Last modified on2016-09-13 10:53:49
History2005-03-09 RB Created.
2013-06-16 RB Downgraded to "optional" as it isn't affecting anyone at the moment (see job003499).