In building clisp, some of the small programs generated by configure cause egcs (cc1) to run out of memory. To reproduce, take the SRPM package from rhcn, edit the spec file: change the existing %setup line to "%setup -n %{name}-%{version}", uncomment the "./configure" line(s), optionally add "make" after the configure lines, and do the "rpm -ba clisp.spec". It could probably be demonstrated more easily, but I haven't had time to narrow it down any better -- yet.
You *really* need a lot of memory to compile that beast.