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"...as computers started running into the 4 GB limitations..." You mean 64 GB limitations? 32-bit x86 could handle that much, and I'm sure it would have withou
by vardump 6y ago
"...as computers started running into the 4 GB limitations..."
You mean 64 GB limitations? 32-bit x86 could handle that much, and I'm sure it would have without AMD64.
- saagarjha 6y agoDidn’t that require PAE and all sorts of workarounds, all for a not-that-great experience?
- vardump 6y agoNo workarounds required if it's enough just to have a lot of up to 3 GB processes (arbitrary, upper 1 GB was typically reserved for the kernel and memory mapped peripherals/IO, like GPU, USB, SATA). Of course if a single process wanted to access more, that would have required remapping or multi-process approach. Or special hacks like Windows AWE [0]. All in all, not ideal, but I'm sure we would have managed with it a bit longer. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_Windowing_Extensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_Windowing_Extensions
- _ph_ 6y agoThere is still the 4GB/process limit, even if with these extensions the total amount of memory in the computer could be larger.