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What is the maximum amount of memory any single process on Windows

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Manish Singh

13y
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Hi.....

Ques: Hello all of you please explain What is the maximum amount of memory any single process on Windows can address? Is this different than the maximum virtual memory for the system? How would this affect a system design?

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Photo of Manish Singh
NA 7.4k 3.1m 13y
Thanks all of you...
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Photo of Anuja Pawar
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32bit or 64bit? 32bit is 2gb (for a process), 64 bit is 1TB (enterprise edition 2003 server).


However, the maximum size of a CLR Object is 2gb even on 64bit.

Processes access virtual memory space, not physical memory. Applications never access RAM directly but only through the memory management interface of the processor.
Depending on which version of Windows you are using, and how the program was compiled there is a different maximum ammount of addressable memory.
All 32 bit processes on 32bit Windows have a 4GB virtual address space. The upper 2GB is common to all processes and is used by the system. The lower 2GB is private to each process and is inaccessable to all others. Unless the program was compiled as large address aware, in which case it will have 3GB of private address space.
For 32bit processes on 64bit Windows, each process has 2GB private address space, unless compiled large address aware in which case it has 4GB private address space.
For 64bit processes on 64bit windows each process has 8TB of private address space whilst compiled as large address aware. The 2GB address space limit remains for programs not compiled as large address aware.
This is completely independent of the size of RAM or the pagefile. The system maps physical memory into this virtual address space according to both need and availability.
At any given time the data in virtual memory space might be stored in RAM, on disk, or both. All of this is totally transparent to all applications. Frequently accessed data will be kept in RAM with the remainder left on disk.


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Photo of Vulpes
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