I ran into the following failure on one of our linux-x64 systems while running runThese:

Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM warning: INFO: os::commit_memory(0x00007f6f32000000, 1409286144, 0) failed; error='Cannot allocate memory' (errno=12)
#
# There is insufficient memory for the Java Runtime Environment to continue.
# Native memory allocation (mmap) failed to map 1409286144 bytes for committing reserved memory.
# An error report file with more information is saved as:
# /scratch/local/aurora/sandbox/results/runThese/hs_err_pid2277.log

Stafan K and Ioi helped determine that the overcommit_memory setting seems to be the trigger. If a system has /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory set to 2, it means:

"Setting to 2, means that processes can only allocate upto (RAM+swap) and will start getting allocation failure or OOM messages when it goes beyond that amount."

On the failing system we have:

$ cat /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory
2