Chris Cason <new### [at] deletethispovrayorg> wrote:
> Plus 64-bit mode also allows you to render insane scenes ;-). (I've rendered
> one here which used 3.5 gigabytes of RAM).

  Theoretically a 32-bit version could also do that, but it's very
possible that some OSs limit the maximum allocatable size to 2 GB.

  (Well, if we go deeper into theory, AFAIK you can use up to 64 GB of
memory with a Pentium or newer 32-bit processor, but the application
would need to be specifically coded to do that. A standard C++ program
can't do it. Naturally the OS has to support that as well (unless the
program bypasses the OS, if it's possible).)

  But I suppose that with a 64-bit binary the theoretical limits are
so immensely high that we don't need to worry about them in the next
several decades (hardware other than the CPU is and will be the limiting
factor for long time). Thus allocating 3.5 or 35 or even 350 gigabytes
of memory is not any problem in a 64-bit system (as long as the hardware
is up to those sizes)... :)

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -

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