In 1996 electronic design automation tools were also hitting the limits of 32 bit address spaces. I don't remember the exact timing of when they were able to us

In 1996 electronic design automation tools were also hitting the limits of 32 bit address spaces. I don't remember the exact timing of when they were able to use more than 4GB in a single process; I think there might have been an in-between period where a Solaris machine running on a 64 bit SPARC CPU could use more than >4GB, but a single process was limited to that amount. Within a few years the tools were ported to use more than 4GB in a single process.