Maybe more noticeable in Lion, than in Snow Leopard and earlier versions of the operating system: 

- in safe mode, an unexpectedly large amount of *wired* memory. 

# Question

Why might more memory be wired in safe mode?

## Links

[Mac OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?][1] 

http://apple.stackexchange.com/q/31801/8546

[XNU questions in Stack Overflow][2]


  [1]: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564
  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/xnu