What Does Memory Bottleneck Mean?

A memory bottleneck refers to a memory shortage due to insufficient memory, memory leaks, defective programs or when slow memory is used in a fast processor system. A memory bottleneck affects the machine’s performance by slowing down the movement of data between the CPU and the RAM. The increased processing times lead to slow computer operations.

Techopedia Explains Memory Bottleneck

A memory bottleneck occurs when running applications require more memory than the available physical RAM. Operating systems such as Windows use virtual memory on the hard disk to accommodate the memory requirements for all the running applications.

Memory bottlenecks are usually identified by memory errors such as in the following cases: