alm program (running in optimize mode for quadratic FC)

[lgpet2pms-Al]

Hello,

I’m facing an issue with the alm program (running in optimize mode for quadratic FC) on a system containing 35764 cells. The job crashes after a few minutes with the following error:
###########################
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::bad_alloc'
what(): std::bad_alloc
Aborted (core dumped)
#############################
This seems to indicate a memory allocation problem. However, the machine has 128 Go of RAM, and actual memory usage never exceeds 7 Go during the run.
The job is launched using: alm scf.alm.in_anha4 > scf.alm.in_anha4.log
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[RicardoCecconello]

I'd say you need to reduce the size of the structure. That is unnecessarily too big. The usage of RAM is calculated by

free parameters x atoms per cell x structures on NDATA x 3 x 8 (Byte)

You should reduce the size of the structure, reduce the number of structures on NDATA and/or reduce cutoff and NBODY.

[ttadano]

If you use a dense solver (default), a large $M\times N$ matrix needs to be allocated, where $M$ is the number of independent force constants, and $N$ is NDATA$\times$ $3 N_{s}$ with $N_s$ being the number of atoms in the supercell.

Since your system is huge, the issue is likely due to a memory allocation.
Please consider trying a sparse solver.