Error in formation of correlation matrix-(corrupt matrix -- dims not not match length)

Question

I am working on a script to create a correlation matrix and mutual_rank matrix from RNAseq gene counts for 57992 genes in 7027 samples. I have already tested this script for a smaller file (for 10,000 genes) and it is working, however, when I am running this script on my final input file, it is giving the following error:

 corrupt matrix -- dims not not match length (this error comes after gene to 
 gene correlation step)

Script which i am running is:

E <- read.table("mdat_human_test.txt", header = TRUE, row.names=1)

# gene-to-gene correlation
C <- cor (t(E))
write.table(C, "human_correlation_genes_mdat.txt", quote=FALSE, sep="\t", 
row.names=TRUE)

# correlation rank matrix
R <- t(apply(1-C, 1, rank))
write.table(R, "human_rank_genes_mdat.txt", quote=FALSE, sep="\t", 
row.names=TRUE)

# mutual rank matrix
M <- sqrt(R * t(R))
write.table(M, "human_mutual_rank_genes_mdat.txt", quote=FALSE, sep="\t", 
row.names=TRUE)

q()

Answer 1

You can't compute a correlation matrix when you have more than ~46000 rows, since a standard R matrix can have a maximum of 2^31-1 values. Have a look at packages like bigcor. Alternatively, consider if having 3+ billion correlation values is really useful.