Aperture 3.5 repeatedly crashes as 'memory full' despite 32GB RAM

Question

Almost every session of editing multiple images my Aperture 3.5 session will hang irrecoverably (Force Quite dialog registers it as Paused) with a 'Memory full' error dialog - despite my iMac's 32GB of RAM and matching virtual memory (supplied by 3TB Fusion drive). This doesn't happen in any other application to my knowledge, including Lightroom 5, Photoshop CS5, etc. This used to happen with Aperture 3.4, and I believe so when on Mountain Lion.
The possible factors that I've considered so far:
1. The library was originally an iPhoto library, upgraded to Aperture-compatible at version 3.4 I believe. I've not worked in iPhoto long enough to test if this is exclusive to Aperture.
2. The library is also a substantial 500 GB, storing 59,000 images - not including versions.
3. The memory hangs when I'm adjusting images, but doesn't appear to be any particular tool.
4. It tends to hang after about half an hour of intensive work, neccessitating a Force Quit and picking up where I left off. As you can imagine, this happens a frustrating amount during a photo editing workout...
Would someone kindly help me out with a list of things I can do to try and assess where the problem lies? Your thoughts would be much appreciated!
p.s. I'd really rather avoid splitting the library up into smaller pieces, as I don't believe that's a problem, with people handling much larger libraries than mine. I would happily move to a 'proper' Aperture library if I could do so without further risking the integrity of the data, though I do have a backup on my TimeMachine.

Answer 1

I have the same problem. My imac has 32GB of RAM and Aperture maxes out the RAM after about 10 to 20 minutes of editing. At first I would get a warning that system memory had been used up and I would have to Force Quit. That was a few weeks ago when I first updated to Mavericks and Aperture 3.5. I am now on 3.5.1. More recently, if I forget to pay attention to the Activity Monitor and don't quit Aperture before it hits the memory limit, Aperture will hang for a moment and then my entire system shuts down. I believe it is the result of a kernel panic. Everything will start back up again with Aperture working fine (unless it requires me to do a repair) until I have to quit Aperture to avoid the shut down. I have noticed that kernel_task in the Activity Monitor usually sits around 1.4GB, but grows significantly and quickly when memory pressure grows if I push it a bit before quitting Aperture. Once I quit, the kernel_task immediately goes back to 1.4GB and memory is released after a few seconds.
I use Aperture all the time for my work. I work quickly with adjustments and have not had problems with the computer keeping up until now.