What determines the maximum RAM capacity a processor can handle?
In: 8
It’s a limitation of the CPU or system itself. Most 8-bit CPUs could only access 64k of memory at one time. The Atari 2600 though could access only 8k.
There were clever tricks you could use (bankswitching) that let you have more than 64, but you couldn’t access it all at once.
eg you have memory ABCD. then you could replace D with E, F, or G but D wouldn’t be accessible anymore
16 and 32-bit systems had something similar, starting on 32-bit Pentium CPUs it was called PAE (physical address extension) where you could access 36-bits of memory, but again not all at once.
Even on x86_64, the instruction set will let you physically access 64-bits. But most CPU limits virtual memory (currently) to 48 bits.
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