R devel - Jan 2006 - Minumum memory requirements to run R.

Quite a while back we set the goal of running R in 16Mb RAM, as people (I 
think Kjetil) had teaching labs that small.

Since then R has grown, and we has recently started to optimize R for 
speed rather than size.  I recently tested R-devel on my ancient Win98 
notebook with 64Mb RAM -- it ran but startup was rather slow on what I 
think is a 233MHz processor and very slow disc.

R still runs in 16Mb, but that is getting tight.  Does anyone have any 
need to run on a smaller machine than my 64Mb notebook?

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> Quite a while back we set the goal of running R in 16Mb RAM, as people (I 
> think Kjetil) had teaching labs that small.
It's a while since I actually har R used on such small machines, I think
64 MB is quite acceptable now.

Kjetil
> 
> Since then R has grown, and we has recently started to optimize R for 
> speed rather than size.  I recently tested R-devel on my ancient Win98 
> notebook with 64Mb RAM -- it ran but startup was rather slow on what I 
> think is a 233MHz processor and very slow disc.
> 
> R still runs in 16Mb, but that is getting tight.  Does anyone have any 
> need to run on a smaller machine than my 64Mb notebook?
>

From: Kjetil Brinchmann Halvorsen
> 
> Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> > Quite a while back we set the goal of running R in 16Mb 
> RAM, as people (I 
> > think Kjetil) had teaching labs that small.
> 
> It's a while since I actually har R used on such small 
> machines, I think
> 64 MB is quite acceptable now.
> 
> Kjetil
> 
> > 
> > Since then R has grown, and we has recently started to 
> optimize R for 
> > speed rather than size.  I recently tested R-devel on my 
> ancient Win98 
> > notebook with 64Mb RAM -- it ran but startup was rather 
> slow on what I 
> > think is a 233MHz processor and very slow disc.
> > 
> > R still runs in 16Mb, but that is getting tight.  Does 
> anyone have any 
> > need to run on a smaller machine than my 64Mb notebook?
I sure don't, but I wouldn't be surprised if one of these days someone
figures out how to get R to run on a video card...  (I recall that there was
a tutorial session at some datamining conference last year that showed
people how to use the GPU for numerical computation, so this may not be too
far fetched.)

Andy