Norton antivirus mac 32 bit kernel mac os x#
Norton antivirus mac 32 bit kernel mac os#

While there are technical details yet to be revealed by Apple, if there are no 64-bit libraries on Mac OS X, the OS does not support 64-bit applications, in all practicality.ДЄn anonymous poster on a Slashdot thread (OK, not the most relibable of sources) confirms this: Whenever you compile even the simplest application on an OS, you must link to libraries of some sort. I have not seen anything yet that implies that new 64 bit addressing versions of the systems libraries and framework will be provided in Panther (I bet they will be recompiled to use 64 bit native math, etc. вЂњOutside of that I believe the user mode libraries/frameworks will remain 32 bit and hence most processes/applications must remain 32 bit (if you are careful of what you use I see no reason you could not use 64 bit addressing in certain tasks). No one really cares how much memory the OS internals use, the key question is can real life applications break the 4GB barrier? One non-Apple poster on the darwin-development list, Shawn Erickson, speculates:

Norton antivirus mac 32 bit kernel mac os x#

So the kernel in current (10.2.x) and future (10.2.7 and 10.3 Panther) versions of Mac OS X will only support a virtual address space of 2^32 bytes = 4GB of memory. вЂњYes the kernelвЂ™s virtual address space will remain 32bit for the medium term but self-evidently we can address >32bit of physical memory from the kernel.вЂќ The basic evidence is from a post on AppleвЂ™s darwin-development list by Apple employee (or email account holder at least) Godfrey van der Linden. More and more evidence is out there that applications on Mac OS 10.2.7 and 10.3 cannot address more than 4GB of RAM, which is the limit imposed by 32-bit operating systems.

It turns out that SmithвЂ™s article on The Register is more or less correct. This had led to a lot of claims that the article is false or misinformed, rather than just unclear, which is certainly is. The basic point of the article is that Mac OS 10.2.7 and 10.3 are not вЂњtrueвЂќ 64-bit OSes, but the article does not clearly explain what a вЂњtrueвЂќ 64-bit OS is. It is also caused a heated argument here on OSNews. A recent article by Tony Smith from The Register titled вЂњ Mac OS X 10.3 Panther will not be a 64-bit OSвЂќ caused a good deal of confusion with many people, including me.