RE: The system cannot execute the specified program
Dear Nick,
Dear All,
Please find below the results of some benchmarking with a customized installation
(i.e. std installation with no. of observations and no. of compartments set to the smallest
values for the respective dataset) vs. the big installation with additionally no. of compartments
increased to 50 and no. of observations increased to 1001.
I did not test any intermediately sized installations, since the results were reasonably
surprising, at least to me.
The bottom line is that, memory use did not seem to be the bottleneck, at least not on this
test system. The benefit of the small installation was biggest for ADVAN1 and ADVAN3.
However, one will probably only notice this benefit during bootstrapping.
I would interpret these differences in the benefit of the customized installation vs. the big
installation that some parts of NONMEM are memory dependent whereas others (especially
solving of differential equations) are not. As long as NONMEM does not return a memory
overflow error and runs the job, I would not worry much about the size of the NONMEM
installation.
Best wishes
Juergen
Cases 1, 2, and 3:
Customized installation: Virtual memory size: 84 MB
BIG installation: Virtual memory size: 828 MB
(nothing else ran on the server other than this one NONMEM VI version 6.2 run)
Case 1: Linear 1-Cmt model, ADVAN1, 15 observations, 50 subjects,
100 bootstrap resplicates with nmbs (in WFN):
Customized installation finished 100 replicates
BIG installation finished 61 replicates in the same time (run on a different, but identical computer)
--> 64% advantage for the customized installation
Case 2: Linear 2-Cmt model, ADVAN3, 15 observations, 50 subjects,
100 bootstrap resplicates with nmbs (in WFN):
Customized installation finished 100 replicates
BIG installation finished 76 replicates in the same time (run on a different, but identical computer)
--> 32% advantage for the customized installation
Case 3: Linear 3-Cmt model, ADVAN11, 15 observations, 50 subjects,
100 bootstrap resplicates with nmbs (in WFN):
Customized installation finished 100 replicates
BIG installation finished 89 replicates in the same time (run on a different, but identical computer)
--> 12% advantage for the customized installation
Case 4: Population PK model, 5 compartments, ADVAN6, run as a single job
Customized installation: 131 min, peak memory use: 75 MB, virtual memory size: 86 MB
BIG installation: 140 min, peak memory use: 225 MB, virtual memory size: 724 MB
--> 7% advantage for the customized installation
Case 5: same as 4, but with overloading of my laptop by running too many programs simultaneously
--> 7% advantage for the customized installation (i.e. exactly the same benefit as in case 4)
Case 6: Population PK/PD model, ADVAN6, about 40 compartments, 15 observations, run as a single job
Customized installation: 330.77 min
BIG installation: 331.12 min
--> 0.11% advantage for the customized installation
Quoted reply history
From: owner-nmusers
Behalf Of Nick Holford
Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2009 12:04 AM
To: nmusers
Subject: Re: [NMusers] The system cannot execute the specified program
Juergen,
I'd be interested to know of your experience of how much estimation time you save by making project specific installations. Given that you must take additional time to setup SIZES and recompile NONMEM for each project (say 10-15 minutes) how much time do you save per run compared with having regular and big installations of NONMEM?
Nick
Jurgen Bulitta wrote:
Dear Tom,
Dear All,
For those of us who prefer project specific NONMEM installations to save estimation time,
it might be helpful, if ICON can provide some rough guidance on the main contributor
to the RAM needs of NONMEM 7.
I.e. is it primarily the number of observations, compartments, thetas, omegas, or
another variable or some function of these variables?
The following might be very cumbersome: Would it be possible to include a switch
during the installation which disables certain NONMEM 7 features to save RAM.
(I recognize that this might cause a lot of unpredictable software issues.)
Dual CPU servers currently have around 8-18 RAM slots. 2 and 4 GB RAM chips are
reasonably priced. Thus, on the 64-bit server side, this is probably a minor issue.
Best wishes
Juergen
From: owner-nmusers
ilto:owner-nmusers
Sent: Friday, October 16, 2009 3:14 PM
To: nonmem
Cc: nmusers
Subject: RE: [NMusers] The system cannot execute the specified program
Pavel,
The message you describe is usually the result of not having enough memory available for the NONMEM 7 memory image. If you are using the "big" version of SIZES you may need about 1.6-2 GB of available memory for each job. For the efficient use of NONMEM 7's new methods more variables are now stored in memory than was the case for NONMEM VI. The memory image is larger even if one is not using the new methods.
When using NONMEM 7 and the "reg" SIZES, I have been able to run 8 jobs simultaneously on a dual processor dual core machine, but only 3-4 jobs when using the "big" version of SIZES depending upon what else is running. I have 3 GB of memory and the task manager indicates a maximum of about 7.4 GB via paging.
Tom
Thomas M. Ludden Ph.D.
Vice-President, Pharmacometrics R&D
ICON Development Solutions
Tel: + 1 410 696 3040
Mob: + 1 410 258 2411
Fax: + 1 410 480 0776
Email: thomas.ludden
Web: http://www.icondevsolutions.com
[cid:image001.jpg
________________________________
From: owner-nmusers
ilto:owner-nmusers
:nonmem
Sent: Friday, October 16, 2009 2:02 PM
To: nonmem
Cc: nmusers
Subject: [NMusers] The system cannot execute the specified program
> Hello NONMEM Users,
> We have a computer with 4 processors. When I try to run more
> than 3 NONMEM7 jobs, I am getting the following message:
> Starting nonmem execution ...
> The system cannot execute the specified program.
> KP9022.OUT
> newline
> 1 file(s) copied.
> Could Not Find H:\4\output
>
> The message is code and directory independent. It always
> appears when I try to run more than 3 codes. When I test
> nonmem7 using a laptop, which also has 4 processors, I can
> execute 4 programs. Also, when I had NONMEM6, I did not have
> this problem on the same machine.
> Do you familiar with this problem? Thanks.
> Pavel
>