Question

Is there a way to set a maximum memory usage for a 64 bit application?

Reason: when a 64 bit .net algorithm/application running on my laptop exceeds memory requirements of 3 GB, my computer gets really slow. (Stays slow after I manually terminate the program.) I would rather have the algorithm terminate when it is exceeding 3GB.

Answer 1

You could check the Process.WorkingSet64 Property.

var currentProcess = System.Diagnostics.Process.GetCurrentProcess();
if(currentProcess.WorkingSet64 > 3221225472)
    throw new System.OutOfMemoryException("Process memory consumption exceeded 3GB");

If you want to limit the memory without checking it, because you’re calling external API’s, you could use JobObjectWrapper. It allows you to create a process and limit the amount of memory this process can use.

JobObjectWrapper is a .NET abstraction over the Win32 Job Object. With
this library you can create job objects, create and assign a process
to the job, control process and job limits, and register for the
various process- and job-related notification events.

Edit: from the sample project:

class Program
{
    static bool _isStop = false;

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        try
        {
            using (JobObject jo = new JobObject("JobMemoryLimitExample"))
            {
                jo.Limits.JobMemoryLimit = new IntPtr(30000000);
                jo.Events.OnJobMemoryLimit += new jobEventHandler<JobMemoryLimitEventArgs>(Events_OnJobMemoryLimit);

                while (!_isStop)
                {
                    ProcessStartInfo psi = new ProcessStartInfo("calc.exe");
                    Process proc = jo.CreateProcessMayBreakAway(psi);
                    Thread.Sleep(100);
                }
            }
        }
        catch (Exception){ }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// The events which fires when a job reaches its memory limit
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="sender"></param>
    /// <param name="args"></param>
    static void Events_OnJobMemoryLimit(object sender, JobMemoryLimitEventArgs args)
    {
        _isStop = true;
        (sender as JobObject).TerminateAllProcesses(8);
        Console.WriteLine("Job has reacehed its memory limit");
    }
}