<computeroutput>--detailed-freq</computeroutput> option.</para>
<para>Finally, there is at most one <emphasis>peak</emphasis> snapshot. The
-peak snapshot is detailed, and records the point where memory consumption
-was greatest. (Actually, recording the true peak is expensive, and so by
-default Massif records a peak whose size is within 1% of the size of the
-true peak. See the description of the
+peak snapshot is a detailed snapshot, and records the point where memory
+consumption was greatest. The peak snapshot is represented in the graph by
+a bar consisting of '#' and ',' characters. The text at the bottom shows
+that snapshot 14 was the peak. Note that for tiny programs that never
+deallocate heap memory, Massif will not record a peak snapshot.</para>
+
+<para>Some more details about the peak: the peak is determined by looking
+at every allocation, i.e. it is <emphasis>not</emphasis> just the peak among
+the regular snapshots. However, recording the true peak is expensive, and
+so by default Massif records a peak whose size is within 1% of the size of
+the true peak. See the description of the
<computeroutput>--peak-inaccuracy</computeroutput> option below for more
-details.) The peak snapshot is represented in the graph by a bar consisting
-of '#' and ',' characters. The text at the bottom show that snapshot 14 was
-the peak. Note that for tiny programs that never deallocate heap memory,
-Massif will not record a peak snapshot.</para>
+details.</peak>
<para>The following graph is from an execution of Konqueror, the KDE web
browser. It shows what graphs for larger programs look like.</para>
<para>Massif does not necessarily record the actual global memory
allocation peak; by default it records a peak only when the global
memory allocation size exceeds the previous peak by at least 1.0%.
- This is because there are many local allocation peaks along the way,
+ This is because there can be many local allocation peaks along the way,
and doing a detailed snapshot for every one would be expensive and
wasteful, as all but one of them will be later discarded. This
inaccuracy can be changed (even to 0.0%) via this option, but Massif