Re: [Hampshire] 64 bit graphics drivers

At 16:00 05/04/2008 +0100, you wrote:
>Hello Andy,
>
> > Not correct, sorry.
>
>Oh, feck. :-(
>
>:-))

You weren't far off, though.

The processor still only really has a 4Gb address space, but it does some
clever page swapping to allow more physical memory to be accessed "in the
same address space".

It's bit like the old DOS extended memory manager trick, but implemented
(largely, at least) at the processor microcode level rather than the OS level.

I believe there is some (small) performance penalty compared to direct
support of a 64 bit address space, but that's purely anecdotal.....

Chris




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