Native Memory Page

The Native Memory Page presents information about the native memory of a process. Native memory is the memory managed by the operating system, rather than the Common Language Runtime.

Selecting memory to show

To select the memory to show, the three radio buttons on the page can be used:

• Show memory of snapshot
  This option is used to show the memory of the currently selected snapshot.

• Show memory difference between snapshot
  This option is used to show the memory difference between the selected snapshot and the comparison snapshot (i.e., the memory entries of the comparison snapshot are subtracted from the memory entries of the selected snapshot).

• Show memory of process
  This option is used to show the memory of any process running on the system (including non-.NET processes). The dropdown list to the right of this option is used to select the process for which memory is to be shown. A separate snapshot of the native memory of the process is taken when this option is selected or when the Refresh button is pressed.

Two views are used to present information about the native memory:

• Committed memory
  This view is used to present the committed memory of a process. Committed memory is memory for which physical storage (in memory or on disk) has been allocated. The physical storage on disk includes the paging file and files that are mapped into the memory of the process (e.g., by loading a DLL).

• Physical memory
  This view is used to present the physical memory of a process. Physical memory is the part of the committed memory that has been mapped to physical memory in the computer. The total sum of this view is the value presented as Memory usage by the Task manager.

Note

The amount of committed memory may be significantly greater than the amount of total memory of the system. For instance, loading a DLL file into the memory of a process makes the whole DLL become part of committed memory, but only the parts of the DLL that are actually used by the process will be mapped to physical memory. For more information, read about “Memory Management” in the Platform SDK documentation.

Trim working set

This button can be used to trim the working set of the selected process. All physical memory is swapped out to the paging file, module, or memory mapped file. It effectively sets the used physical memory to zero. As soon as memory is needed, it will be swapped back into physical memory.

By trimming the working set, it is possible to find the physical memory requirements of the process. Since all memory is swapped out, the physical memory presented is only the physical memory used after trimming the working set. Any memory used only for startup of the process will not be included.