Hell, you might even be able to go smaller. For example, if you know that you're going to have less than 256 instances of a given object, an 8-bit handle will

Hell, you might even be able to go smaller. For example, if you know that you're going to have less than 256 instances of a given object, an 8-bit handle will do the job nicely at an eighth of the size of a full-blown 64-bit pointer.