How do I allocate more memory to MATLAB 2011a in OS X 10.6.8?

[poster]

I do a lot of analysis in MATLAB, and while the machine on which I run it has 16 GB of memory, MATLAB almost never uses more than 1GB of Real Memory. Even if I disable the virtual memory, it seems not to use all the RAM at its disposal.

Generally, the blue pie wedge of 'inactive' RAM (as indexed by the Activity Monitor) continues to grow until I have to log out and log back in again.

Is there any way to fix this, to assign memory specifically to MATLAB, or to optimize memory management in 64-bit MATLAB?

Thanks

More...