The profmem()
function of the profmem package
provides an easy way to profile the memory usage of an R expression. It
logs all memory allocations done in R. Profiling memory allocations is
helpful when we, for instance, try to understand why a certain piece of
R code consumes more memory than expected.
The profmem()
function builds upon existing memory
profiling features available in R. It logs every memory
allocation done by plain R code as well as those done by native code
such as C and Fortran. For each entry, it records the size (in bytes)
and the name of the functions on the call stack. For example,
> library("profmem")
> options(profmem.threshold = 2000)
> p <- profmem({
+ x <- integer(1000)
+ Y <- matrix(rnorm(n = 10000), nrow = 100)
+ })
> p
Rprofmem memory profiling of:
{
x <- integer(1000)
Y <- matrix(rnorm(n = 10000), nrow = 100)
}
Memory allocations (>= 2000 bytes):
what bytes calls
1 alloc 4048 integer()
2 alloc 80048 matrix() -> rnorm()
3 alloc 80048 matrix()
total 164144
From this, we find that 4048 bytes are allocated for integer vector
x
, which is because each integer value occupies 4 bytes of
memory. The additional 40 bytes are due to the internal data structure
used for each variable R. The size of this allocation can also be
confirmed by the value of object.size(x)
. We also see that
rnorm()
, which is called via matrix()
,
allocates 80048 + 80048 bytes, where the first one reflects the 10000
double values each occupying 8 bytes. The second one reflects some
unknown allocation done internally by the native code that
rnorm()
uses. Finally, the following entry reflects the
memory allocation of NA bytes done by matrix()
itself.
Assume we want to set a 100-by-100 matrix with missing values except for element (1,1) that we assign to be zero. This can be done as:
> x <- matrix(nrow = 100, ncol = 100)
> x[1, 1] <- 0
> x[1:3, 1:3]
[,1] [,2] [,3]
[1,] 0 NA NA
[2,] NA NA NA
[3,] NA NA NA
This looks fairly innocent, but it turns out that it is very
inefficient - both when it comes to memory and speed. The reason is that
the default value used by matrix()
is NA
,
which is of type logical. This means that initially
x
is a logical matrix not a numeric
matrix. When we the assign the (1,1) element the value 0
,
which is a numeric, the matrix first has to be coerced to
numeric internally and then the zero is assigned. Profiling the
memory will reveal this;
> p <- profmem({
+ x <- matrix(nrow = 100, ncol = 100)
+ x[1, 1] <- 0
+ })
> print(p, expr = FALSE)
Memory allocations (>= 2000 bytes):
what bytes calls
1 alloc 40048 matrix()
2 alloc 80048 <internal>
total 120096
The first entry is for the logical matrix with 10,000 elements (= 4 * 10,000 bytes + small header) that we allocate. The second entry reveals the coercion of this matrix to a numeric matrix (= 8 * 10,000 elements + small header).
To avoid this, we make sure to create a numeric matrix upfront as:
> p <- profmem({
+ x <- matrix(NA_real_, nrow = 100, ncol = 100)
+ x[1, 1] <- 0
+ })
> print(p, expr = FALSE)
Memory allocations (>= 2000 bytes):
what bytes calls
1 alloc 80048 matrix()
total 80048
Using the microbenchmark package, we can also quantify the extra overhead in processing time that is introduced due to the logical-to-numeric coercion;
> library("microbenchmark")
> stats <- microbenchmark(bad = {
+ x <- matrix(nrow = 100, ncol = 100)
+ x[1, 1] <- 0
+ }, good = {
+ x <- matrix(NA_real_, nrow = 100, ncol = 100)
+ x[1, 1] <- 0
+ }, times = 100, unit = "ms")
> stats
Unit: milliseconds
expr min lq mean median uq max neval
bad 0.022 0.032 0.046 0.050 0.055 0.073 100
good 0.009 0.036 0.034 0.039 0.041 0.050 100
The inefficient approach is 1.5-2 times slower than the efficient one.
The above illustrates the value of profiling your R code’s memory
usage and thanks to profmem()
we can compare the amount of
memory allocated of two alternative implementations. Being able to write
memory-efficient R code becomes particularly important when working with
large data sets, where an inefficient implementation may even prevent us
from performing an analysis because we end up running out of memory.
Moreover, each memory allocation will eventually have to be deallocated
and in R this is done automatically by the garbage collector, which runs
in the background and recovers any blocks of memory that are allocated
but no longer in use. Garbage collection takes time and therefore slows
down the overall processing in R even further.
The profmem()
function uses the
utils::Rprofmem()
function for logging memory allocation
events to a temporary file. The logged events are parsed and returned as
an in-memory R object in a format that is convenient to work with. All
memory allocations that are done via the native
allocVector3()
part of R’s native API are logged, which
means that nearly all memory allocations are logged. Any objects
allocated this way are automatically deallocated by R’s garbage
collector at some point. Garbage collection events are not
logged by profmem()
. Allocations not logged are
those done by non-R native libraries or R packages that use native code
Calloc() / Free()
for internal objects. Such objects are
not handled by the R garbage collector.
utils::Rprofmem()
and
utils::Rprof(memory.profiling = TRUE)
In addition to utils::Rprofmem()
, R also provides
utils::Rprof(memory.profiling = TRUE)
. Despite the close
similarity of their names, they use completely different approaches for
profiling the memory usage. As explained above, the former logs all
individual (allocVector3()
) memory allocation whereas
the latter probes the total memory usage of R at regular time
intervals. If memory is allocated and deallocated between two such
probing time points, utils::Rprof(memory.profiling = TRUE)
will not log that memory whereas utils::Rprofmem()
will
pick it up. On the other hand, with utils::Rprofmem()
it is
not possible to quantify the total memory usage at a given time
because it only logs allocations and does therefore not reflect
deallocations done by the garbage collector.
In order for profmem()
to work, R must have been built
with memory profiling enabled. If not, profmem()
will
produce an error with an informative message. To manually check whether
an R binary was built with this enable or not, do:
The overhead of running an R installation with memory profiling enabled compared to one without is neglectable / non-measurable.
Volunteers of the R Project provide and distribute pre-built binaries of the R software for all the major operating system via CRAN. It has been confirmed that the R binaries for Windows, macOS (both by CRAN and by the AT&T Research Lab), and for Linux (*) all have been built with memory profiling enabled. (*) For Linux, this has been confirmed for the Debian/Ubuntu distribution but yet not for the other Linux distributions.
In all other cases, to enable memory profiling, which is
only needed if capabilities("profmem")
returns
FALSE
, R needs to be configured and built from
source using:
For more information, please see the ‘R Installation and Administration’ documentation that comes with all R installations.
Copyright Henrik Bengtsson, 2016-2018