Similar to the show processes cpu sorted command, the show processes memory sorted printout displays the top memory consumers (see example below).

router#show processes memory sorted

Total: 13734272, Used: 6372068, Free: 7362204

 PID TTY  Allocated      Freed    Holding    Getbufs    Retbufs Process

   0   0     135340       1864    4734916          0          0 *Init*

  55   0     242388        188     249076          0          0 URL filter proc

  69   0     317996     143308     182184          0          0 IPSEC key engine

  62   2     277048     124752     165172          0          0 Virtual Exec

  68   0     762828     657056     109896          0          0 Crypto IKMP

  80   0      74556       1100      73772          0          0 CEF process

  91   0      25704        188      28776          0          0 NTP

  67   0       3116      51368      27904          0          0 Crypto ACL

  83   0        184          0      25060          0          0 traffic_shape

  30   0      89900          0      24700          0          0 IP Input

  46   0      32248       1776      23596          0          0 DHCPD Receive

  35   0      10236        540      16572          0          0 PPPOE discovery

  48   0      95344      51488      14724          0          0 HTTP CORE

Usually the top entry is the *Init* process, which allocates all shared buffers, but routing processes could also exhibit significant memory utilization in large networks.