Is 4GB the max on a 32 bit OS?

[Scott Ledyard]

Interesting.
So, as a practical matter, if we're trying to setup a lab of 24 workstations
that may all be surfing with Firefox or learning Open Office Word at the
same time, would it be best to:
1) Install the AMD 64 bit version
2) Setup a custom kernel
3) Setup additional server(s)
4) Other?

Scott

On 1/18/07, Jonathan D. Proulx <jon at csail.mit.edu> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jan 18, 2007 at 07:15:26AM -0500, Scott Ledyard wrote:
> :On my list of "basic questions that I'm sure someone's answered, but I
> can't
> :find it" is this:
> :Can the x86 versions of Ubuntu (or any OS) employ more than 4GB of RAM?
> :I read with interest how to size an LTSP server and noticed that people
> have
> :recommended lots of RAM. But, I've also heard that a 32 bit processor
> cannot
> :physically address more than 4GB of memory. True?
>
> True and False....
>
> you can custom build a 32bit kernel to address upto 64G of memory,
> there is a performance hit but it's still much faster to use the lower
> performing memory than to page to disk.
>
> a single 32bit process however cannot address more than 4G of memory.
>
> In the case where you need lots of memory to run lots of processes
> this works out, in the case where you have a single process that wants
> >4G it does not.
>
> -Jon
>
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