[erlang-questions] Huge erl_crash.dump (2 gigs) - looking for advice

[David Welton]

> I'll just insert my general whinge NOT specifically about Erlang but more
> about link lists where the size of the overhead _dwarfs_ the data itself.

Agreed.  It looks like this patch might have helped, some:

https://github.com/erlang/otp/pull/359 (thanks to Loïc once again for
pointing it out)

> Also about any code allocating from a heap something less than several
> times the size of a pointer.
>
> Back when pointers were sixteen bits things were bad enough but storing
> strings in (linked) lists where pointers are sixty four bits and the
> minimum overhead for allocating _something_ on any unconstrained heap is
> the size of one pointer is ludicrous.
>
> I could go on about how the move to 64-bit computing has got us wasting
> even more memory even though in practice almost nothing needs it.

It's a bit of a tangent, but I once did some calculations about the
costs of that move on things like VPS's where memory is something you
pay for: http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/11/24/slicehost-vs-linode/ -
it's pretty dated, being from 6 years ago, but I think it did a
reasonable job of showing that having all those 64 bit pointers around
costs money in certain cases.

-- 
David N. Welton

http://www.welton.it/davidw/

http://www.dedasys.com/