kernel_task in activity monitor

[skolar]

I've been trying to find an answer for this for a very long time, but i have yet to find it.

In activity monitor i see a process constantly running and using a decent amount of real memory (its always the first or second process sorted by highest memory usage).

What is it running? I have not been able to find any useful info by probing the process. I also havent gotten any useful info from apple support.

Can one of you geniuses help me out? I'm really curious to know what this process is doing and if i can free up that memory.

Thanks in advance!

BTW: I'm running a powerbook G4 1Ghz with 768 MB of RAM with OS X 10.3 Panther.

 

[Kokopelli]

I already answered in the other thread but since this is probably in the more appropriate place...

At the most basic level kernel_task is the root of OS X. It is the service that controls kernel level threads activations and stacks. (Drivers being loaded, thread creation, low level network and IO communication, etc...)

You can't really do much to free up memory from there. The memory usage sounds about right. If it were tying up all your memory nd/or CPU then you might have a bad driver somewhere, but I doubt that is the case here.