CPU affinity

Kdb+ can be constrained to run on specific cores through the setting of CPU affinity.

Typically, you can set the CPU affinity for the shell you are in, and then processes started within that shell will inherit the affinity.

.Q.w (memory stats)
Basics: Command-line parameter -w, System command \w

Linux

Use the taskset command to limit to a certain set of cores, e.g.

taskset -c 0-2,4 q

will run q on cores 0, 1, 2 and 4. Or

taskset -c 0-2,4 bash

and then all processes started from within that new shell will automatically be restricted to those cores.

You can also use numactl -S to specify the cores, perhaps combined with -l to always allocate on the current node or other policies discussed in the linux production notes:

numactl --interleave=all --physcpubind=0,1,2 q

Other ways to limit resources

On Linux systems, administrators might prefer cgroups as a way of limiting resources.

On Unix systems, memory usage can be constrained using ulimit, e.g.

ulimit -v 262144

limits virtual address space to 256MB.

Solaris

Use psrset

psrset -e 2 q

which will run q using processor set 2. Or, to start a shell restricted to those cores:

psrset -e 2 bash

Windows

Start q.exe with the OS command start with the /affinity flag set

start /affinity 3 c:\q\w64\q.exe 

will run q on core 0 and 1.