4 ms·
> "Processor word width has absolutely nothing to do with memory size." Huh? How would you address high positions on your 8Gb memory with a 32 bits pointer tha
by pmelendez 13y ago
> "Processor word width has absolutely nothing to do with memory size."
Huh? How would you address high positions on your 8Gb memory with a 32 bits pointer that will overflow after 4Gb?
- plorkyeran 13y agoYou don't have to have all of your memory mapped into your address space at once.
- colanderman 13y agoIf your processor doesn't have special pointer registers, you can use banked memory. (e.g. the high bits are selected on a page-by-page basis by the OS, which understands 64-bit-wide pointers.) If the processor does have special pointer registers (e.g. 6502, 6809, 8086, AVR, etc.), you use those.