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Memory footprint

Memory footprint refers to the amount of main memory that a program uses or references while running.

The word footprint generally refers to theextent of physical dimension that an object occupies, giving a sense of itssize. In computing, the memory footprint of an executable program indicates itsruntime memory requirements, while the program executes. This includes allsorts of active memory regions like code segment containing (mostly) programinstructions (and occasionally constants), data segment (both initialized anduninitialized), heap memory, call stack, plus memory required to hold anyadditional data structures, such as symbol tables, debugging data structures,open files, shared libraries mapped to the current process, etc., that theprogram ever needs while executing and will be loaded at least once during theentire run.

Larger programs have larger memoryfootprints. Excessive number of utility classes and methods in a programminglanguage design would increase the footprint for API users even if they did not use non-standard plug-ins orapplications. Programs themselves often do not contribute the largest portionsto their own memory footprint; rather, structures introduced by the run-timeenvironment take up most of the memory.