Re: 32 bit vista can't address more than 3.1-3.5 GB RAM

"Snit" <CSMA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:C395AD0E.9EFE0%CSMA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Daniel Johnson" <danieljohnson2@xxxxxxxxxxx> stated in post
13n0nim2d018qd7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on 12/24/07 6:35 PM:

There's no sense in going 64-bit on such a system.

When "general consumer computers" move beyond 4 GB, then 64-bit Vista will
be a "general consumer version of Windows".

With OS X you are already there... with Windows, well, someday. OK.

I appreciate you like the hybrid approach OS X takes- you've only told me
1,386,124 times after all- but OS X is not "already there". OS X simply
doesn't have a 64-bit version. It's a 32-bit OS with some extensions.

While I have told you 1,386,102 (please note, you exaggerated with your
count), in 76.3% of those cases I have asked you the downside to Apple's
hybrid approach. Will you provide an answer now? Please?


Now, now, Snit: I've already given you that several times. Just because you don't *like* my answers doesn't mean I didn't give them.

But I will repeat myself:

1. Your ability to actually use large amounts of memory is limited by the hybrid-ness of it. The 32-bit parts can only use 4 GB each. In practice a bit less, due to various bits of overhead. And since the 32-bit parts include Carbon and the kernel, they can hardly be dismissed as insignificant. The only important things that *can* use the memory are Cocoa apps [1], and the disk cache.

2. Apple's technique for doing this hybridization is not the documented, standard one (which MS used). OS X trips into long mode and back again on the fly, an unsupported trick reminiscent of Unreal Mode on the old 80286 in DOS. Unreal Mode was a real problem (as it were) once you started trying to run DOS programs in DOS boxes. Programs that did that can no longer be run on today's Vista. If Apple ever wants to do a "Classic" again, they've got a problem.

3. Apple's technique makes driver implementation trickier, since drivers are 32-bit but need to understand 64-bit addresses. Apple doesn't *care* about this, since they write the drivers for all the hardware that matters to them. But if you care about peripheral availability for the Mac, you should care about it.

4. You tend to lose advocacy debates about this, because we *all* know that True <Feature> is good, and all else is mere False.

In the short run, #4 is obviously the critical item here.

But in the long run, if Apple doesn't get their act together, #1 will hurt them: they'll be stuck selling memory their software can't use properly. They've been there before, back in the OS 9 days, when they sold multi-CPU Macs and couldn't really harness that extra grunt for lack of SMP support. They shouldn't want to go back there.

[1] If there are any 64-bit Cocoa apps that actually have any use for >4GB of RAM. Do you know of any?

.

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