calloc is more effecient than malloc+memset when the system uses mmap to
allocate memory. mmap always returns zeroed memory so the memset can be
avoided. The threshold to use mmap is 16k in osx libc and 128k in bsd
libc and glibc. The kernel can lazily allocate the pages, this reduces
memory usage when we have a page table or hash table that is mostly
empty.
This change is most visible when you start a new redis instance with vm
enabled. You'll see no increased memory usage no matter how big your
page table is.