Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 968
memory usage
Last modified: 2004-02-16 10:46:05 UTC
Hi. I posted some benchmark data on the main discussion list regarding this, but thought I'd do an issue report too. It seems the way the presentation package uses memory is rather inefficent, to the point of un-usable. In a medium size presentation, say 30 slides and 20mb's, SO/OO requires 200mb of ram to open! In Powerpoint its about 30mbs. If I try to open even large one hour talk (60 slides and 60mbs), I need a machine with 1Gb of ram. This problem is similarly relavent to the drawing package and has gotten me into serious trouble. You don't need any special file to illustrate, but I could generate one if you wish. thanks, -Sep
Hello Sep, due to the fact, that such performance-porblems might depend on the kind of content included in a file, it would help, to send us your doc. Thank you.
OK, so I can't send you either orginal files for confidentiality reasons. I put together a smaller example file that illustrates the problem pretty well. Your attachment tool doesn't like big attachments so download here: http://pergatory.mit.edu/skiani/Benchmark.sxi When you open it in OO you'll need to view all the slides in slide view mode to get to the max memory issue. One positive note, it seems that some signifcant improvements were made in 633 over past and SO. This file will peak out memory (turning on peak memory column in task manager in W2k) in SO52 at 118mb and 61.5mb in OO633. PowerPoint 2K is at 9.7mb. You can basically take these memory loads and multiply by 2-4x to get to a good 1hr talk. Hope that helps.
Hello Dieter, it would help if development gives some background notes concerning our performance compared with that of powerpoint.
DL->KA: Please check if the SlideViews preview bitmaps needs so much memory of if it's a problem of the graphic manager
Problem was caused by generating the preview bitmaps for the slide view. After loading the images for a page, the page wasn't swapped out. This bug should be solved now. Basic memory footprint is a little bit higher than in powerpoint, of course (~60MB should be OK for Impress). Fixed in SRC641F
OK I just tried it and there is some improvment but still not 100%. When I open my (10mb) document for presentation memory usage goes to 250mb for the soffice process. This is same as before. But, if I walk through all the slides or go to "slide view" memory usage drops off quickly to about 85mb's. While this is an improvement, I still can't open this presentation on my 160mb laptop unless I convert to powerpoint :(. Is it impossible to fix this?
KA: we still have to take a look.
KA=>Sepehr: Hi Sepehr, I've got some questions concerning your memory problems: Does memory go up to 250MB by just loading the document and not traveling through the slides? In which mode is the document opened (normal mode with one slide visible after opening ? slide mode with many slides visible ? outline mode? ...) Is it possible for you to give us the presentation you have problems with (250MB memory consumption)? the document you already gave us doesn't show this behaviour (at least on my system)
This is not limited to the presentation component. Just opening Write allocates about 48 MB on my Win XP system. Typing a few words makes it go up to about 57 MB, where it tends to stay. MS Word, on the other hand, allocates about 20 MB upon opening and tends to stay at about 26+ MB. I'd say OO's using a LOT more memory than its close competitor. Is it related its use of Java, by any chance? Or maybe a bunch of plugins. Another open source software (Eclipse -- www.eclipse.org) suffers with similar problem.
Kai, I can't send you the file (propriety info). Just tried a 15.0mb presentation (OOo native file. Note when I did the first import from Powerpoint format ram went up to 160mb, I then saved and exited). It took OOo about 1:05 minutes to open and push ram usage up to 49mb (goes to 72mb if viewing thumbnails). Powerpoint2K opens orginal file (16.4mb) in <1sec and uses 8.5mb (if I go into thumbnail mode ram goes to 42mb). I tried the 10mb file that I think was a problem before. It is a powerpoint file. Opening it pushes ram up to 233mbs but after a few minutes of walking through the presentation the ram usage drops off quickly to 77mb. Still pretty big. Looks like you've improved memory management, but right after the import appears to be a problem. Slow start up speed is a big problem when you've only got a few minutes with a potential customer and you want to quickly open an old presentation to show one or two slides. Note: I'm running these tests OOo 1.1beta under NT4.0 on a 950MHz K7 system with 1.5Gb ram.
The benchmark.sxi has a "Peak Memory Usage" of nearly 47 MB on my computer. It has 192 MB RAM and runs on OOo 1.0.3 on W2K. However, the Peak Memory Usage is allocated physical RAM, not virtual memory. As long as your pagefile is big enough, there shouldn't be any problem, besides being somewhat slower than Powerpoint. However, I used "Process Explorer" and found that it's higher memory consumption is probably located in the amount of dlls that are loaded into memory: 116 dlls for OOo vs 46 for PowerPoint. Maybe developers should look into dynamically loading dlls only when needed. My 2c., Peter
Aggregating several DLL's into one is sometimes a good idea, and it could improve memory footprint.
We try to make a realistic anlysis of tasks for OOo 2.0 and I have to check the priorities. This is not a priority 1 task, I change it to P2. It is important, to work on memory management. But it is not so easy. We try our best for the next version. To make a comparison with MS products is not so easy. Because MS Office use many system libraries (Installation of MS Office change many files with more than 150MB in the system directory) and these libraries are loaded with the system. So the footprint of Word, Excel or Powerpoint are bigger as the 'process explorer' can analyze.
It is my understanding that memory allocation is done on behalf of a calling app. So, even in your scenario, we should be able to see all memory that is allocated for MS Word. Mozilla people tend to explain memory problems with their software the same way you did, thorstenziehm, but Opera (which is full of features too) handles memory much better.
If I read Roman explanation, it look like Framework Issue. So I add MBA to CC. CMIIW. Quote: ------- Additional Comments From roman1 2003-04-23 13:20 PDT ------- This is not limited to the presentation component. Just opening Write allocates about 48 MB on my Win XP system. Typing a few words makes it go up to about 57 MB, where it tends to stay. MS Word, on the other hand, allocates about 20 MB upon opening and tends to stay at about 26+ MB. I'd say OO's using a LOT more memory than its close competitor. Is it related its use of Java, by any chance? Or maybe a bunch of plugins. Another open source software (Eclipse -- www.eclipse.org) suffers with similar problem.
A memory footprint of about 60MB seems to be normal to me at the moment. So, this task should only be related to the memory footprint of Impress after loading a presentation file (sxi or ppt). I still cant reproduce this, but maybe our QA guys (=>CGU) can. Christian, please load several files and watch for memory footprint during and after loading the document. Is memory on the high side after loading and drops by traveling through the slides?
I don't have the mentioned file (Benchmark.sxi) but I loaded several other flies to test the behaviour and can't reproduce the bug. The memory footprint is allways less then 45 Mb. the memory footprint of PPT seems to be a little big smaller but according to the comment of pb9494 I don't know the exact memory footprint of PPT. I think a memory footprint of less then 45 Mb is ok.
I change the resolution to invalid
I close the bug as invalid. Please reopen it if the bug still occures and you can send me a test document.