4GB of memory for 32 bit application running on 64-bit Solaris (Very Large Memory)?

There is no library I'm aware of but implementing it would be quite straightforward under Solaris (and all Unix/Unix like OSes supporting tmpfs and mmap) Just create a file the size you want (eg: 16 GiB) in /tmp (assuming /tmp is on tmpfs, the default configuration) and have the process(es) mapping various areas of this file to access memory at the wanted offsets Should you really want to access physical memory and not virtual one, you can use Solaris ramdisk support (ramdiskadm) instead of tmpfs.

There is no library I'm aware of but implementing it would be quite straightforward under Solaris (and all Unix/Unix like OSes supporting tmpfs and mmap). Just create a file the size you want (eg: 16 GiB) in /tmp (assuming /tmp is on tmpfs, the default configuration) and have the process(es) mapping various areas of this file to access memory at the wanted offsets. Should you really want to access physical memory and not virtual one, you can use Solaris ramdisk support (ramdiskadm) instead of tmpfs.

Solaris supports PAE (Physical Address Extension), but Googling around doesn't paint a pretty picture. There is very little information available, and most of it is dire warnings that a bunch of third-party drivers won't work with it.

The question is not about PAE, it is about 32bit program on 64bit OS. 64bit OS need no PAE to use >4GB of mem, because it can directly address 2^64 (virtually) or 2^36-2^40 (physically). But 32 bit program can't address > 4GB of mem and even PAE can't do anything with this.(PAE didn't change sizeof(void*); it only allow OS to map higher physical memory into lower 4GB of memory which is virtual memory or addressable by program memory) – osgx Nov 13 at 0:50 Anyway, "virtual-physical address mapping" is managed by OS, and VLM is OS/userspace collaborate technique.

– osgx Nov 13 at 0:52 @osgx: You're right. However, both VLM and AWE rely on PAE. If you can't get PAE going on Solaris, you won't be able to address more than 4 GB.

– Marcelo Cantos Nov 13 at 2:44 1 No. VLM don't rely on PAE.64-bit OS (this is my case) don't rely on PAE. PAE is not only >4GB access method even for 32 bit OS: the other is PSE36: en.wikipedia.Org/wiki/PSE-36 – osgx Nov 13 at 4:03.