@Jabbar – I believe that these are an approximate description of the various reported values:

* Peak memory is the maximal amount of allocated memory during the execution of the profiled line/function.
* Allocated memory is the total amount of memory allocated during the execution. Note that it is a cumulative amount, meaning that if you have an allocation of 1KB in a loop that runs 50 times, you’ll see a 50KB value.
* Freed memory is the total amount of memory de-allocated during the execution. This too is a cumulative amount.
* Self memory is the memory used by the profiled line/function, which is not deallocated (and therefore not included in the “Freed memory” value).

Note that these are speculations: The exact definition of what is reported under which category is internal to Matlab and is currently unknown.

Hi Yair,
That’s what I figured, but I thought I would ask for clarification anyway. Thanks so much for your quick response and wealth of knowledge! It seems a bit strange. I can run the same set of functions with the same inputs, but the profiler comes back with different results. And I’ll need to determine if it’s my code or Matlab itself causing the memory growth… Well, I will certainly let you know what I can come up with.
Thanks again!
~Andrew

@Andrew – it should be relatively easy to see where allocated>freed: when there are no leaks, these two should have exactly the same value.

You could also use non-Matlab tools (e.g., Process Explorer for memory leaks or GDIView for GDI handle leaks — both of them for Windows).

Note in advance that hunting down memory leaks in Matlab is very difficult, due to the lack of good monitoring tools (AFAIK).

If you or anyone else find any leaks, please report them here or directly to me. I know for a fact that MathWorks’ dev team are very interested in such inputs — whatever will be reported to me I will pass on to them for fixing.