Re: [Boost-users] size_type doubts / integer library..

From: Zeljko Vrba (zvrba_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-08-19 01:49:23

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 12:02:26AM +0200, Andrea Denzler wrote:
> > -----Messaggio originale-----
> > I believe (I checked some time ago) that you cannot allocate an object
> > of size 2GB on any 32-bit OS that I could get my hands on. Do you know
> > of any place where you can?
> 
> Sure those systems are few, very few, but they exist. I think Solaris/x86
> can go to nearly 4GByte, some Linux to 3 GByte, and why not talking about
> the old  80286 allowing 64Kbyte allocations on a 16bit addressing scheme. 
> 

You are talking about the size of address space available to the user program.
Even if your address space is 3GB, it's improbable that you're going to be
able to allocate huge chunks due to external fragmentation of the address
space, esp. when randomization (ASLR) is in effect.