Quoting Jesper Louis Andersen (jlouis@mongers.org):
> www.mlton.org is a compiler for the Standard ML language. The 
> compiler uses whole-program compilation, ie, it loads all source
> files and compiles them all in one go. This, tied with the Garbage
> collector it uses makes the compiler use quite a lot of anonymous
> memory. 

Addendum, since you always forget some details:

uname -a 
NetBSD mushroom.home 2.99.10 NetBSD 2.99.10 (MUSHROOM) #0:
Thu Dec  2 23:32:50 CET 2004

(almost a GENERIC_LAPTOP kernel, with some drivers missing).

dmesg reports 
639 Mb RAM all in all
617 Mb RAM avail, wonder where the last couple of Mbs went, heh

-- 
jlouis