Is it possible to access memory as a block ?

[Pinit Asavanuchit]

I have a situation to load large amount of data multi-million of data to
memory for processing.
It's memory intensive application. Analysis.

I have found that Hash is too slow, then I try Array but it's overhead
of 20 or 40 byte make me run out of memory.

I try to find how to define a pointer to block of memory or create array
which less overhead.

Is that possible in ruby ?

 

[Joel VanderWerf]

I have a situation to load large amount of data multi-million of data to
memory for processing.
It's memory intensive application. Analysis.

I have found that Hash is too slow, then I try Array but it's overhead
of 20 or 40 byte make me run out of memory.

I try to find how to define a pointer to block of memory or create array
which less overhead.

Is that possible in ruby ?

What kind of data is it?

Check out mmap:
http://rubyforge.org/projects/mmap/

Also the narray gem and A. Howard's combination of the two:
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/162769