On Thursday, April 04, 2013 15:20:26 Kagamin wrote: > I'm afraid, those applications are not tied to 32-bit ints. They > just want a lot of memory because they have a lot of data. It > means they want more than 4 gigs, so uint won't help in the > slightest: it can't address more than 4 gigs, and applications > will keep failing.
It's a difference of a factor of 2. You can access twice as much memory with a uint than an int. It's quite possible to need enough memory that an int wouldn't be enough and a uint would be. Of course, going 64-bit pretty much solves the problem, because you're not going to have enough memory to need anywhere near 64-bits of address space any time soon (and probaly not ever), but uint _can_ make a difference or 32-bit machines, because it gives you twice as much memory to play around with. - Jonathan M Davis