Editing Memory leak (section)

==Causes of serious leaks==
Much more serious leaks include those where:

* A program runs for a long time and consumes added memory over time, such as background tasks on servers, and especially in [[embedded system]]s which may be left running for many years
* New memory is allocated frequently for one-time tasks, such as when rendering the frames of a computer game or animated video
* A program can request memory, such as [[shared memory]], that is not released, even when the program terminates
* Memory is very limited, such as in an [[embedded system]] or portable device, or where the program requires a very large amount of memory to begin with, leaving little margin for leaks
* A leak occurs within the operating system or [[Memory management|memory manager]]
* A system [[device driver]] causes a leak
* The operating system does not automatically release memory on program termination