I used to have a similar problem on OS X. When I was working on a 32-bit app that could eat tons of memory, I ended up using a bunch of weird heuristics and all

I used to have a similar problem on OS X. When I was working on a 32-bit app that could eat tons of memory, I ended up using a bunch of weird heuristics and allocation tracking just to get a probable assurance that the program could recover properly from running out of address space.