checking available system memory?

[Darren Dale]

I am doing linear algebra with large numarray. It is very efficient, but I
have a small problem due to the size of my data. The dot product of a
10,000x3 double array with a 3x6,250,000 double array will consume 500GB of
memory. I need to break the operations up into managable chunks, so I dont
consume all the available memory and get a segmentation fault.

Its not a problem with numpy, I just need to intelligently slice up one of
my arrays so my routine works within the available system resources. Are
there any utilities that can query how much memory is available?

Thanks,
Darren