Windows stack size

Testlimit sets the default stack reservation in its PE image to 64K and when you include the —n switch along with the —t switch, Testlimit creates threads with 64K stacks. Resident available memory is the physical memory that can be assigned to data or code that must be kept in RAM. A basic kernel stack is 12K on bit Windows and 24K on bit Windows.

Once the resident available memory limit is hit, many basic operations begin failing. Resident available memory is obviously still a potential limiter, though. The bit version of Testlimit Testlimit Once the commit level reached the size of RAM, the rate of thread creation slowed to a crawl because the system started thrashing, paging out stacks of threads created earlier to make room for the stacks of new threads, and the paging file had to expand.

The results are the same when the —n switch is specified, because the threads have the same initial stack commitment. The number of processes that Windows supports obviously must be less than the number of threads, since each process has one thread and a process itself causes additional resource usage.

If the only cost of a process with respect to resident available memory was the kernel-mode thread stack, Testlimit would have been able to create far more than 8, threads on a 2GB system. Dividing the amount of resident memory Testlimit used 1. Since a bit kernel stack is 24K, that leaves about K unaccounted for.

This acts as a guarantee to the process that no matter what, there will enough physical memory available to hold enough data to satisfy its minimum working set. The remaining roughly 6K is resident available memory charged for additional non-pageable memory allocated to represent a process. Skip to main content. This browser is no longer supported. Download Microsoft Edge More info. Contents Exit focus mode.

Is this page helpful? Please rate your experience Yes No. Any additional feedback? For performance reasons, it is not recommended to disable kernel stack paging globally, but if you want to do so during a debugging session, see Disable paging of kernel stacks. Because the kernel stack might be paged out, please be cautious about passing stack-based buffers i. Skip to main content.

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