MEDx Frequently Asked Questions - MEDx Configuration

Q: What should the Tile Pool size be?

The answer to the question depends on the following:

1. How much data are you going to be analyzing.

2. The amount of RAM on your system.

3. The amount of swap space available to your system.

4. How many other processes are you running and how much memory do they use?

Let's say you are going to be analyzing 100 volumes containing 19 slices each where each slice is 64 x 64 x 2 bytes. In this case, you should not set the Tile Pool size very large. A good value in this case would be close to 20 MB, since the whole data set occupies 15564800 bytes. If you use a very large Tile Pool size then the MEDx process itself will grow to be very large and if your system does not have enough RAM or enough swap space, then the sytem will not allocate MEDx any more memory, in which case it might fail. Further, even if the Tile Pool memory allocation succeeds with a large Tile Pool size set, there might be problems later on, since some systems might not allow processes to grow beyond a certain size. So, once again, you should carefully evaluate your system configuration and the amount of data you are going to be processing.

A good rule of thumb with regard to the Tile Pool size and physical RAM is: The tilepool size should be 1/4th your RAM size. Again, there are no hard and fast rules; the actual amount would also depend on the amount of data to be analyzed. There is no additional benefit to setting the Tile Pool size much larger than the size of the largest data set (volume or groups of volumes) you expect to analyze. In fact, as described above, there may be some drawbacks if the Tile Pool size is too large.

A good rule of thumb for the amount of swap space given a certain amount of RAM is : Amount of swap should be at least = 2.5 x physical RAM.

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