Strategy: If Solver RAM Is Too High
The purpose of solver RAM (solram) is to reduce the amount of disk I/O. If you set solram too high, performance usually suffers, even on machines with very large RAM, for the following reasons:
• There will not be enough machine RAM for other important data. For example, Creo Simulate allocates many large, non-solver memory areas that will cause excessive swapping unless you leave enough spare machine RAM.
Except for the solver, Creo Simulate allocates memory for other operations as needed. These other memory allocations can become large and, in combination, are often larger than the solram allocation. Even for computers with very large machine RAM, if you set the solram value too high, you may force the other memory areas used by Creo Simulate out of RAM and into swap space.
• There will not be enough RAM for the operating system to do disk caching. Disk caching improves file system performance by holding file data in RAM for faster access.
Setting solram to 0.5 times machine RAM is usually the best compromise between reducing the amount of disk I/O and leaving enough machine RAM for disk caching and for other data. By limiting the solram allocation to half the machine RAM or less, you greatly increase your chances of achieving optimal performance. If there is too much demand on machine RAM and swap space, system performance can be severely degraded. In this situation, decreasing solver RAM can increase overall system performance.