Memory Use with E^-(10^11) vs E^-(10^10)

Questions
,
1

I happened to come across behavior that I don’t understand when executing the following:

E^-(10^11)

When I execute the above expression, memory use on my PC goes the maximum installed RAM and the HDD usage goes to 100%. This locks up my PC.

Executing E^-(10^10) has no effect on my PC memory use. The result is symbolic and I’m not computing an arbitrary precision result, so I’m surprised that memory use would be affected.

Does anyone experience this? Is it normal?

PC information:

  • Mathematica V10
  • OS: Win 8.1
  • RAM: 16 GB
2

Same here, besides RAM loads down virtual memory
M10
Windows 7 Pro.

3

No such similar behavior on MacOSX. Sounds like a bug.

4

No problem with Window 7 Home Premium

In[22]:= $Version
Out[22]= "10.0 for Microsoft Windows (64-bit) (June 29, 2014)"

In[4]:= E^-(10^11)
Out[4]= 1/E^100000000000

In[5]:= E^-(10^10)
Out[5]= 1/E^10000000000

In[8]:= N[E^-(10^11), 100]
Out[8]= 4.7295218355627448338846996370790873689181078443333835968458353849343069\
65812228961404328217878684066*10^-43429448191

In[9]:= N[E^-(10^10), 100]
Out[9]= 9.2785844203248725780731422989302228936631015498327395613504872541681042\
05450822972896290668681753332*10^-4342944820

In[21]:= E^-(10^11) == (E^-(10^10))^(10)
Out[21]= True