Question: What is the max file size that SAS software can successfully read.
(without considering hardware limit)

Thanks in advance.

Answer: 
To quote a recently running TV commercial, the answer is "infinity plus 1".

SAS does not have any limitation on the size of a file during read operations, although it's possible you might run into a limit on the number of observations written to a new SAS data set. On a 64-bit system, that would be 2\*\*63-1, about 9.2 quintillion observations. You are more likely to run out of disk space.
"The maximum size of a SAS data set in a Direct Access Bound Library is limited by the maximum size of the library, which is about 2986 GB on 3390 volumes."

<http://support.sas.com/kb/8/213.html>