What does RSS stand for in the context of memory management?

In the context of memory management, RSS stands for Resident Set Size. This term refers to the portion of memory that a process occupies in RAM at any given time. RSS comprises the amount of memory the process is currently using that is held in physical RAM, excluding any memory that has been swapped out to disk. This metric is particularly useful for monitoring the memory consumption of processes because it helps administrators and performance analysts understand how much of the physical memory is actively being utilized versus memory that may still be allocated but not currently in use.

Understanding RSS is important for system performance analysis, as high RSS values can indicate heavy memory use, potentially leading to performance degradation if the system needs to swap memory pages in and out of physical memory frequently. Thus, monitoring Resident Set Size is crucial for ensuring optimal system performance and resource allocation.