brk() and sbrk() change the location of the program break, which defines the end of the process's data segment (i.e., the program break is the first location after the end of the uninitialized data segment).
From the Linux man page:
brk() and sbrk() change the location of the program break, which defines the end of the process's data segment (i.e., the program break is the first location after the end of the uninitialized data segment). Increasing the program break has the effect of allocating memory to the process; decreasing the break deallocates memory.
brk() sets the end of the data segment to the value specified by addr, when that value is reasonable, the system has enough memory, and the process does not exceed its maximum data size (see setrlimit(2)).
sbrk() increments the program's data space by increment bytes. Calling sbrk() with an increment of 0 can be used to find the current location of the program break.
See also this SO question.
