Top buffers

Hi,

"buffers" mean the part of memory used for disk (file system) caching

It's sometimes also called "non-computational" memory in other UNIXes.

wmp

When extra physical memory is not in use, the kernel attempts to put it to work as a disk buffer cache. The disk buffer stores recently accessed disk data in memory; if the same data is needed again it can be quickly retrieved from the cache, improving performance. The buffer grows and shrinks dynamically to use the memory available, although priority is given to using the memory for paging. Thus, all the memory you have is put to good use.

When applications need more memory, some of the buffers will be removed to clear memory.