Total RAM vs Peak RAM

[alexpate30]

Hello, many thanks for your package! Very basic a question, as a novice to the world of memory allocation, trying to get my head round how to interpret the outputs from PeakRAM.

Why is the Peak RAM often higher than Total RAM? Given their names, I would expect "total" to exceed "peak"? Looking at the descriptions, it stated:

Total RAM = "the amount of RAM allocated as a result of that call"

Peak RAM = "the maximum amount of RAM allocated at any point during that call"

Therefore a couple of questions:

1. What determines amount of RAM allocated? Is the amount of RAM allocated just based on the inputs to the function being evaluated?

2. Where does the name "Total RAM" come from?

3. Is the Peak_RAM_Used_MiB effectively what will be causing any bottlenecks/code unable to run on a system if it has insufficient RAM for the function call?

Many thanks again!