How to reduce the memory usage of an x86 assembler to compile a single large 200MB+ file?

Asked Oct 30 '15 at 02:33

Active Nov 10 '15 at 18:14

Viewed 191 times

I'm trying to assemble a >200MB x86 asm file with GAS in a VM with 4GB of RAM. Unfortunately, GAS quickly consumes all system memory and gets killed. I've also tried with the --reduce-memory-overheads flag, but the same result occurs.

I've also tried using yasm, but it also runs out of memory.

I know assemblers aren't really designed to handle files of this size, but I'm also surprised that they use so much memory trying to do so (why is this the case?).

The actual code is just one big function, split into several parts, so theoretically possible to break up into separate functions (or do they need to be separate files?), but is there any way to assemble this without splitting up the function? I could also allocate more RAM, but I suspect that it wouldn't help much for the amount of RAM I have available (I would've thought 4GB to be plenty).

edited Nov 10 '15 at 18:14

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asked Oct 30 '15 at 02:33

zinga

Did you hand write the function or is it generated by some compiler? – Seva Alekseyev Oct 30 '15 at 02:49
The code is generated by a script (you could consider it to be like a compiler I suppose). – zinga Oct 30 '15 at 02:53
Is it *your* script/compiler? Can you modify it to generate multiple functions instead of one? – Seva Alekseyev Oct 30 '15 at 03:03
Yes I can (as mentioned above), but I'm hoping to do it without having to split it up. Thanks for the responses by the way. – zinga Oct 30 '15 at 03:12
2

Well then, increase the per-process memory limit on the VM and/or create a larger pagefile. – Seva Alekseyev Oct 30 '15 at 12:50
Ah, the more RAM solution. Seems like there's no good way to do this then - a shame since I didn't think this would be a problem. Thanks for your help Seva! – zinga Oct 30 '15 at 21:47
Write your own assembler :) – Seva Alekseyev Oct 30 '15 at 22:31

How to reduce the memory usage of an x86 assembler to compile a single large 200MB+ file?

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