Subject: Re: Does cygwin have a 2GB Memory/RAM limit ?
From: Brian Dessent <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 09:34:26 -0800

Dan_Nazario/ACIM/[email-masked] wrote:

> Coming from a Solaris background, it did not even occur
> to me that "Windows 2003 enterprise server" would
> impose a 2GB usable memory limit by default on an application.
> 
> Doesn't seem like a very 'enterprise' sort of thing to do ;-)

It has less to do with the wishes of the software and everything to do
with ths IA32 architecture.  Despite the efforts of PAE, the x86 chips
can only address 32 bits (4GB) at any given time.  Since there must be
some division between kernel space and user space, it naturally follows
that there must be some artificial limit of under 4GB for applications. 
It would be a Bad Thing if the kernel were to run out of pages, hence
the default 50/50 partition.

Brian

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