Why do I get an "Out of Memory" error in MATLAB 7.14(R2012a) despite having sufficient memory?

When I perform the following operation:

>> rand(5000)./rand(5000);

I get an "Out of memory" error. I should not be getting this error as I have 128GB RAM. Why do I get this error?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

Execute the following command to find out if the MATLAB version installed is 32 bit or 64 bit:

>> mexext

It was found that the MATLAB 7.14(R2012a) installed was 32-bit version. A 32-bit version MATLAB can access upto a maximum of 2GB-3GB of memory, even if the system is 64-bit. This is explained in the following documentation page:

 <http://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2012a/techdoc/matlab_prog/brh72ex-49.html>

In order to overcome this error, install 64-bit version of MATLAB 7.14(R2012a). The 64 bit MATLAB running on a 64 bit OS can access approximately 8TBytes of memory.