What determines the maximum RAM capacity a processor can handle?
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You can design a processor to handle any amount of ram you want. It’s down to the communication between the memory controller and the processor. It’s easier if you stick to sizes smaller than the word width i.e. 2^32 bytes for 32 bits, 2^64 for 64 bits. Going beyond that requires much more support from the operating system translating addresses from a smaller address space to the larger address space. Or you have to write software aware that it’s running in a computer with an extra wide address space i.e. embedded programs that are their own OS maybe by linking to a library based OS. That trick is called an exokernel but they have always been extremely niche things.
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