From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2007-08-07T12:31:54+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Free RAM 1.0

Alex Gutteridge wrote:
> On 7 Aug 2007, at 07:06, Ari Brown wrote:
> 
>> Hey!
>>
>> Despite your best efforts, Todd, I managed to create a tool which will
>> free RAM to be used by other programs.
>>
>> At the moment, it is only usable on *nix machines (BSD, Linux, and
>> Mac). Will add Windows support soon.
>> move it to /bin and save it as free_ram
>>
>> Usage: free_ram TIME
>> TIME is the amount of time you want Ruby to spend clearing the RAM. A
>> good amount is about 20. I can clear a large amount of RAM with that.
>>
>> http://www.aribrown.com/ruby/free_ram.rb
> 
> Other people have explained why this really isn't such a great idea, but
> in the spirit of experimentation...
> 
> If you want a portable version why not just:
> 
> require 'timeout'
> 
> z = ''
> timeout(25){ while(true) do z << 0.chr * (2 ** 24) end}
> 
> Or for the 'moar power!!11!' user how about a RubyInline version:
> 
> require 'inline'
> 
> class IWantA
>   inline do |builder|
>     builder.c "
>     int way_to_die(int size){
>       return malloc(size);
>     }"
>   end
> end
> 
> while(IWantA.new.way_to_die(2 ** 12) != 0)
> end
> 
> Both managed to shunt almost every other process into swap in a few
> seconds. Enjoy!
> 
> Alex Gutteridge
> 
> Bioinformatics Center
> Kyoto University
> 
> 
> 
> 
But wait!! I'll C your Ruby Inline and raise you one stress test, i.e.,

 http://weather.ou.edu/~apw/projects/stress

I can take a machine down instantaneously with their memory hog. ;)