On Jan 17, 2004, at 1:33 AM, statalist-digest wrote:
I am currently running the Windows version of STATA on a PC with 2GB of
RAM, but need more memory to handle a very large data set. I am
preparing
to purchase a Unix version of STATA.
You need a 64-bit machine. If speed is NOT an issue, your Sun machine
with 8GB of RAM will work fine. If you want a more modern solution,
Stata has just released a version for 64-bit Linux on AMD64/Opteron
machines. I bet you by now you could get a stripped Opteron in a pizza
box or desktop case for $2000, without the memory costs, which will be
substantial if you want 8GB.
I have two machine options at our University. First, there is a Sun
Microsystems Enterprise 4500 with 8 UltraSPARC-II Processors and 8 GB
RAM
running Solaris 8. Will STATA be able to utilize the full 8 GB of this
machine?
If you install the 64-bit Solaris version, certainly.
My second option is a set of Unix machines that are in a cluster. Is
STATA
scalable so that it can make use of several CPUs in a cluster or must
in
run on a single machine?
No. In general, clusters (memory is not shared across machines) are not
a solution for working on large datasets unless a very large amount of
custom algorithm writing is being done.
As a final note, Mac OS X is NOT currently a 64-bit OS, so PowerMac G5s
are only slightly better with large datasets than Stata for Windows.
Jeremy
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