Just wondering, but does anyone know if Mac OS X actually allows processes to run with a full 64 bit address space? Or is everything just running in a 32 bit compat mode? I couldn't see anything with a quick search on Apple's web page.
WinNT ran on the 64 bit alpha quite a while ago, but it only ran in a 32 bit mode. Is Apple doing the same thing here? Is the whole 64 bit thing, wrt Apple, all flash and no fire?
BTW, just because the new G5 machines can have 8GB of RAM doesn't mean that an individual process can access more than 4GB. Hell, some Intel procs can access >4Gb, but they are still 32 bit processors. For example, the 32 bit version of W2k3 server can support 32GB of RAM. This extra RAM can be accessed via specialized APIs or you can have, for example, 10 processes each using 2GB.