I don&#x27;t think the lists would have to be collected, erlang processes have a relatively hefty private heap (233 words) by default, so chances are the process just dies without needing to run a GC[0]. The lists do need to be allocated and initialised though, which may or may not contribute to the runtime.<p>[0] the way I understand it, each process would generate a 10-elements list of small integers, which would be 21 words (1 word + 1 word&#x2F;element + the sum of the element sizes — 1 word each for small integers)