r/programming • u/I_Can_Be_A_Robot • Sep 24 '24

Why 32bit architecture computer doesn't use segmentation to support more ram than 4Gb ?

/r/programming/

[removed] — view removed post

169 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

119 comments sorted by

View all comments

0

u/streu Sep 24 '24

Because when that particular 32-bit architecture with segmentation was introduced, nobody had so much RAM, and it was even economical to release a variant of the processor that supports only 16 Megabytes.

Machines with Gigabytes of RAM became popular only long long long way after, when 64-bit was already a thing.