64-Bit VB.NET Allocating > 2GB of RAM (.NET bug?)
.net, 64-bit, c#, memory, vb.net
Solution
Apparently it is not possible to allocate more than 2GB even under 64 bit .net application running on a 64 bit OS.
I find this to be very disappointing and completely without regard for what 64 bit applications and OSs are made for. I am dealing with gigantic images and would like to be able to work with the raw bytes all in RAM at once. Now I have to implement paging algorithms to limit the chunks to 2GB.
Hey Microsoft, hows abouts you fix this in the coming .NET release? Yes, I said fix. That's because it's broken. How do you expect 64 bit applications to take off when you do stupid things like this. (Can you tell that I am annoyed.) Thanks for listening.
Link
http://blogs.msdn.com/joshwil/archive/2005/08/10/450202.aspx
Problem
I have a 64 bit VB.NET application and want to allocate a buffer > 2GB in size. In the following code both the "new" and the "ReDim" throw an "OverflowException." How can I allocate buffers > 2GB when these functions only accept signed 32 bit values? (Is this possible in C#?) Edit - I am running WinXP 64 with 4GB of RAM. ``` Dim width As Long = 19005 Dim height As Long = 32768 Dim buffer() As Byte = New Byte((width * height * 4) - 1) {} Dim size As Long = (width * height * 4) - 1 ReDim buffer(size) ```