Fix clw-gpu-oom: Resolve OpenClaw GPU Out-of-Memory Errors

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 14:24:49 +0800

1. Symptoms

The clw-gpu-oom error in OpenClaw manifests during GPU resource allocation or kernel dispatch, indicating the graphics processing unit (GPU) has exhausted its video RAM (VRAM). OpenClaw, a lightweight C++ wrapper for OpenCL, throws this exception when clw::Buffer creation, clw::Image, or kernel argument binding fails due to insufficient memory.

Typical symptoms include:


[OpenClaw Error] clw-gpu-oom: Failed to allocate GPU buffer of size 2147483648 bytes on device 'NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080' (CL_MEM_READ_WRITE). Error code: -4 (CL_MEM_OBJECT_ALLOCATION_FAILURE)

terminate called after throwing an instance of 'clw::Error'
 what(): clw-gpu-oom at /path/to/openclaw/src/clw_buffer.cpp:145
Aborted (core dumped)

Programs halt abruptly post-compilation, often after successful OpenCL context initialization (clw::Platform, clw::Device, clw::Context). No kernel execution occurs. GPU utilization spikes briefly via tools like nvidia-smi:

AMD ROCm on ErrorVault — Developer Error Code Dictionary

Fix clw-gpu-oom: Resolve OpenClaw GPU Out-of-Memory Errors

1. Symptoms