Comment 5 for bug 725881

On x86-64 Linux? Something like that is expected, yes:

 CL-USER> (+ (- sb-vm::read-only-space-end sb-vm::read-only-space-start)
             (- sb-vm::static-space-end sb-vm::static-space-start)
             (- sb-vm::dynamic-space-end sb-vm::dynamic-space-start)
             (- sb-vm::linkage-table-space-end sb-vm::linkage-table-space-start))
 8593002496

Most of that is dynamic space, though, so you can easily run SBCL under way smaller virtual memory limit as long as you shrink dynamic space enough -- here's SBCL under 100 megs:

> uname -a
Linux solipsist 2.6.35-27-generic #48-Ubuntu SMP Tue Feb 22 20:25:46 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[nikodemus@solipsist:~/src/maxima-5.23.2/src]
> ulimit -v 100000
[nikodemus@solipsist:~/src/maxima-5.23.2/src]
> sbcl --dynamic-space-size 75
This is SBCL 1.0.46.21, an implementation of ANSI Common Lisp.
More information about SBCL is available at <http://www.sbcl.org/>.

SBCL is free software, provided as is, with absolutely no warranty.
It is mostly in the public domain; some portions are provided under
BSD-style licenses. See the CREDITS and COPYING files in the
distribution for more information.
*

...I have no idea why you thought #scheme would be the best place to ask for help.