> We could have 32-bit pointers with a bit of hacking: We can also have them with zero hacking since there is an existing ABI for 32 bits pointers in 64 bit mo

> We could have 32-bit pointers with a bit of hacking: We can also have them with zero hacking since there is an existing ABI for 32 bits pointers in 64 bit mode: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/X32_ABI https://wikipedia.org/wiki/X32_ABI ; you get all the benefits of x86_64 mode (more registers, default support of SSE2 etc) for the memory usage level of x86 (and 4gb of accessible ram instead of x86 OSes's 2.something addressable gigabytes). I'm pretty sure that only specialized apps actually require >4gb of ram - most common utilities (e.g. shell, text editor, etc...) should really be compiled in x32 mode.