Linked by Jeremy T. Fox on Fri 11th Jul 2003 16:55 UTC
A recent article by Tony Smith from The Register titled "Mac OS X 10.3 Panther will not be a 64-bit OS" caused a good deal of confusion with many people, including me. It is also caused a heated argument here on OSNews. The basic point of the article is that Mac OS 10.2.7 and 10.3 are not "true" 64-bit OSes, but the article does not clearly explain what a "true" 64-bit OS is. This had led to a lot of claims that the article is false or misinformed, rather than just unclear, which is certainly is.
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Just because the kernel only uses 32 bits for its address space does that preclude other programs running on the hardware from doing so?
A kernel is just a program running on bare metal. The kernel doesn't need a 64 bit address space to do its work but does that preclude the kernel from assisting user space programs that might use 64 bit address space?
I know this probably sounds weird but if the kernel can set up stupid MMU tricks for user mode programs but use different tricks for itself then, in theory, one could have a 64 bit address space in use by a program but the kernel only using a smaller 32 bit address space subset.
This might be quicker/cheaper than having to convert the kernel to full 64bit from the get go.