> How does the system know what is OS and what is 32-bit apps? > "OS" works in kernel space while application is not.
PAE affects paging system allowing software to address 2^36 bytes of memory. You can access it in kernel space, but user space applications are limited to 2^32 bytes of virtual memory (even less than 2^32 because of mappings). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension If you are interested in memory management in IA-32 (and IA-32e) here are good links: 1) official guide: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/architectures-software-developer-manuals.html 2) nice (human-readable) book: http://mindshare.com/shop/?c=b§ion=0A6B17101710 > Where would GCC fit in this regard, or Clang for that matter? > If you write app for user-space (not kernel module) you should not care about PAE. You simply compile it as you would do it for system with out of PAE. Ilya. _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
