Re: [Valgrind-users] understanding massif output when run against a simple executable

[Eliot M. <mo...@cs...>]

On 5/13/2014 6:49 PM, Rob Taylor wrote:
> I recently discovered valgrind while searching for a way to see how much memory (total memory
> footprint) my small program represented.
>
> I was perplexed by the results I was seeing, since I expected at most to use perhaps tens of
> thousands of bites not Millions. My application is not dynamically requesting/allocating memory, all
> memory consumed is in the form of statically assigned character arrays, automatic stack usage etc..

> So I did a test by running valgrind against an empty C program. The program does nothing but return.
> Can someone explain why the output shows continually increasing memory used and in total over a 6 MB
> peak?

Dynamically linked libraries and their data.  Some of that
(most of the code areas) can be shared in real memory with
other programs using the same library.  There's a lot of
mechanism there, even if you are not using much of it, and
even if you are using parts of it without realizing it ...

Regards -- Eliot Moss