memory reported under linux higher that allocated?

[Benoit Tremblay]

Hi, I have 4 gig of RAM and when I allocate 3 gig the <top> utilities show that my application is using 87% of the available RAM, so it's a half a gig more, why? The application is not doing any disk access. 
 
I just do a couple of malloc and the same amount of free at exit. I count all malloc by incrementing a "m" variable and I decrement the same "m" variable when doing free and at the program exit I display the value of "m" and it is zero. I stop doing malloc when my "m" variable reach 3 gigabytes so I am sure I allocate only 3 gigabytes so why my application is using 87% of all available RAM? Benoit
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