The OS uses then virtual memory to allow the individual process 4 GB of memory. The OS assigns then memory to each process in a virtual memory space for this process and maps access to this virtual memory to the real physical memory.Ĭurrent 32-bit systems uses an extension (Physical Address Extension (PAE)) which extends the physical space to 36-bits of the operation system.
If each memory area consists of 8 bytes then a 16-bit system can access 64KB of memory and the 32-bit system can access 4GB of memory.Īn operating system (OS) normally uses virtual memory to map the physical memory to memory which each process can see. A 16-bit address can access 2^16 (=65.536) memory locations.
A amount of memory a CPU can access is based on the size of the physical address which the CPU uses to identify physical memory. The processor can access the normal memory over the memory bus. These registers are fast memory elements which stores the result of the CPU. The processor (CPU) of the computer computes the instructions to execute and stores its computation results into registers. Native memory is controlled by the operating system (OS) and based on physical memory and other physical devices, e.g. Native memory is the memory which is available to a process, e.g.
