M_TRIM_THRESHOLD When the amount of contiguous free memory at the top of the heap grows sufficiently large, free(3) employs sbrk(2) to release this memory back to the system. (This can be useful in programs that continue to execute for a long period after freeing a significant amount of memory.) The M_TRIM_THRESHOLD parameter specifies the minimum size (in bytes) that this block of memory must reach before sbrk(2) is used to trim the heap.