Memory not released from closed figures, also not by closing Matlab. Only by end process tree.

I have some code and generate figures with a decent amount of data but nothing that overwhelms normal machines (using windows xp). e.g. 2 contour plots and a 1000 line plot. If I close figures and plot some new ones, after a few times things slow to a crawl and 95+% of my ram is tied up in matlab. Closing matlab doesn't release it. It remains as a process in task manager and only an "end process tree" releases it.

I'd note that this computer has integrated graphics. I wondered if figures typically take up GPU memory on a dedicated card and this is managed there, or however that works? (I'm also curious to know if gpu memory is the limiting factor on slow plots, e.g. scatter plots with >1e5 points).

[Ritesh Chandna]

1. Which MATLAB release are you working on?

2. What's the bitness of your operating system?