Limit physical memory per process

Question

I am writing an algorithm to perform some external memory computations, i.e. where your input data does not fit into main memory and you have to consider the I/O complexity.

Answer 1

have you considered trying your code in some kind of virtual environment? A virtual machine might be too much for your needs, but something like User-Mode Linux could be a good fit. This runs a linux kernel as a single process inside your regular operating system. Then you can provide a separate mem= kernel setting, as well as a separate swap space to make controlled experiments.