How increase the dinamic memory allocation using malloc?

[hahr]

Hello,

I am trying to allocate dinamically 3 pointers in memory. First one will storage a binary file, bigger than 1GB, as char, second one would be a copy from first, but as Uint16 (unsigned short). Third one would be a 3x3 matrix double type. I am using malloc to allocate those pointers.

cBuffer = (char*) malloc(size*sizeof(char))

iBuffer = (unsigned short*) malloc(size*sizeof(unsigned short))

dMatrix = (double***)malloc(size*sizeof(int))

for(i=0; i<size; i++)

    dMatrix[i]=(double**)malloc(size*sizeof(unsigend short))

    for(j=0; i<size;i++)

       dMatrix[j]=(double*)malloc(size2*sizeof(double))

where "size" always would be bigger than 1GB and size2 is a little bit bigger than size, cBuffer is a pointer to char, iBuffer is a pointer to unsigned int and dMatrix is a pointer 3*3 to a double.

The problem is when I try to allocate memory for iBuffer, CVI can not allocate it, malloc function returns me a NULL pointer.

Someone knows how can I allocate huge buffers in memory using malloc?

I am working in a PC with Windows XP SO and 4 GB  in RAM, so I have enough memory to do it. 500GB in HDD

Thanks in advance!

Hiram Hernandez

[Wolfgang]

On a 32 bit system, size*sizeof() cannot be larger than 2 GB. Because sizeof () will return something like 4 or 8 bytes, size itself has to be correspondingly smaller.

[RobertoBozzolo]

This is an interesting discussion that spans over huge memory allocation, also covering some topics on using compilers different than CVI native one to obtain better behaviour in this matter.

[jrbecker]

Because your system has 4GB, doesn't mean that it is all available to you.  I think that you can access somewhat less that 2 GB because the OS takes the rest.  I have a very similar hardware setup to you with WinXP and usually the most I can allocate in no more that 1.5 GB.

[hahr]

Thanks to all,

So I need change to a 64 bits system in order to process more than 1.5GB in memory.