(v13) Determining memory allocation parameters

This page applies to Harlequin v13.1r0 and later; and to Harlequin Core but not Harlequin MultiRIP

Depending on your expectations for throughput or latency, and whether you are running entire jobs as a single run or, for example, splitting pages to a different RIP, there is a requirement to determine how much memory to reserve for other (non-RIP) processes, how many RIPs you will run on a machine, and whether swapping is ever acceptable.

If swapping is never acceptable, you should subtract the reserve for other processes from the physical memory total, and divide that by the number of RIPs to run. If that number is too small to allow jobs through, you should either dynamically control the number of RIP processes running and their working size allocations, or accept that on occasions swapping may happen and allow more total working size than the machine has physical memory.

NOTE:   Swapping allows a computer to execute programs and manipulate data files larger than main memory.