> In all of recorded history, has a malloc() call for more than 2GB ever actually succeeded anywhere? Yes, on OS X 10.5, and on 32-bit Linux with Glibc until t

> In all of recorded history, has a malloc() call for more than 2GB ever actually succeeded anywhere? Yes, on OS X 10.5, and on 32-bit Linux with Glibc until two days ago. The article I linked, written before Glibc 2.30 was released, is from a period when every Unix had been allowing “malloc(0x80000001);” in 32-bit processes until recently; only OS X had had the courage to make that allocation fail. Sorry if the article doesn't make it clear enough that this is the context it is written in, but in its defense, you only needed to try it (and still need today to try it if you didn't upgrade Glibc) to see that it succeeds. Or do you think that the Glibc developers wrote a Changelog entry to explain that they changed something that didn't actually change? Linux's default limit on 32-bit has been 3GiB for a while, i think: https://stackoverflow.com/a/5080778/139746 https://stackoverflow.com/a/5080778/139746 Windows's limit is 2GiB by default, but this is only a default and 32-bit processes can be allowed access to more memory, up to IIRC nearly all of the theoretical maximum 4GiB for 32-bit processes running on 64-bit Windows.