[SciPy-user] 64 bit Address Space Limitations

[Travis Oliphant]

Mark W. wrote:
> Hi. We are converting our systems to a 64-bit platform to hopefully take 
> advantage of larger address spaces for arrays and such. Can anyone tell me - 
> or point me to documentation which tells - how much address space for an 
> array I could hope to get? We have a memory error on the 32-bit machines 
> when we try to load a large array and we're hoping this will get around that 
> 2 Gig (or less) limit.
>   
This is finally possible using Python 2.5 and numpy.  But, you need to 
use Python 2.5 which is only available as an SVN check-out and still has 
a few issues.  Python 2.5 should be available as a release in the summer.

NumPy allows creation of larger arrays even with Python 2.4 but there 
will be some errors in some uses of slicing, the buffer interface, and 
memory-mapped arrays because of inherent limitations to Python that were 
only recently removed.

-Travis