XPost: alt.folklore.computers   
   From: terje.mathisen@tmsw.no   
      
   Stephen Fuld wrote:   
   > On 8/4/2025 8:32 AM, John Ames wrote:   
   >    
   > snip   
   >    
   >> This notion that the only advantage of a 64-bit architecture is a large   
   >> address space is very curious to me. Obviously that's *one* advantage,   
   >> but while I don't know the in-the-field history of heavy-duty business/   
   >> scientific computing the way some folks here do, I have not gotten the   
   >> impression that a lot of customers were commonly running up against the   
   >> 4 GB limit in the early '90s;   
   >    
   > Not exactly the same, but I recall an issue with Windows NT where it    
   > initially divided the 4GB address space in 2 GB for the OS, and 2GB for    
   > users.  Some users were "running out of address space", so Microsoft    
   > came up with an option to reduce the OS space to 1 GB, thus allowing up    
   > to 3 GB for users.  I am sure others here will know more details.   
      
   Any program written to Microsoft/Windows spec would work transparently    
   with a 3:1 split, the problem was all the programs ported from unix    
   which assumed that any negative return value was a failure code.   
      
   In effect, the program had to promise the OS that it would behave    
   correctly before it was allowed allocate more than 2GB of memory.   
      
   Terje   
      
   --    
   -    
   "almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)