It's not that they expect machines with terabytes of memory. The
expanded address space gives them flexibility in the memory mapping
and virtual memory. For instance, in my last position I wrote a kernel
module to capture the contents of memory at a given point in time. In
the 32-bit days I had to play all kinds of tricks to address physical
memory above 1 GB because the kernel's address space directly mapped
to physical memory and if the machine had more it wasn't straight
forward. With a 64-bit kernel there is a specific memory mapping that
directly mapped to all of physical memory making things much easier on
me and my kernel module. Read up on how virtual memory works to
understand the reasoning behind this.
Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 27, 2009, at 7:42 PM, Ryan Rix <
phrkonaleash@gmail.com> wrote:
> Jim March wrote:
>> Osama Yo Mama uses terrorbytes!
>>
>> Ah!
>
> Oh, uhm... I agree...?
>
> To put things back on firm earth and on-topicness... Why on earth
> would
> Linus even waste his time on trying to get this much memory
> addressed in the
> kernel? What is the rational behind it, besides being a publicity
> stunt?
>
> --
> Ryan Rix
> (623)-826-0051
>
> Fortune:
> Fun Facts, #14:
> In table tennis, whoever gets 21 points first wins. That's how
> it once was in baseball -- whoever got 21 runs first won.
>
> http://hackersramblings.wordpress.com | http://twitter.com/
> phrkonaleash
> XMPP: phrkonaleash@gmail.com | MSN: phrkonaleash@yahoo.com
> AIM: phrkonaleash | Yahoo: phrkonaleash
> IRC: PhrkOnLsh@irc.freenode.net/#srcedit,#teensonlinux,#plugaz and
> countless other FOSS channels.
>
>
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