> Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 18:55:00 +0100 > From: Stuart Henderson <s...@spacehopper.org> > > On 2011/10/02 07:38, Barbier, Jason wrote: > > >>3. What's the point in keeping sys/arch/i386/i386/pmapae.c? Are there any > > >>plans for re-enabling PAE support? > > > > PAE will always be needed for 32bit processors as I understand it. There are > > some 32bit processors out there that the > > boards will allow for more than 4 gigs of ram But you will need PAE to > > actually see it. This used to be a big thing > > for SQL servers before everything went 64bit on that side. So why it may not > > be enabled by default its a quick option change > > to enable it if you ever need it. > > PAE is not used on OpenBSD/i386 and from what I remember likely > never will be, just run amd64 if you want more ram. > > So there is probably no point keeping this.
Well, I've actually done some work on reviving PAE on i386, such that we can do W^X properly at the page level on halfway modern machines. The idea is to keep paddr_t at 32-bit, so you won't be able to address more physical memory. If you want that, indeed, use amd64 like Stuart suggests. This is sort of a backburner project though, so don't expect anything to come out of it in the very near future.
