Ciro Santilli Physical address extension.
With 32 bits, only 4GB RAM can be addressed.
This started becoming a limitation for large servers, so Intel introduced the PAE mechanism to Pentium Pro.
To relieve the problem, Intel added 4 new address lines, so that 64GB could be addressed.
Page table structure is also altered if PAE is on. The exact way in which it is altered depends on weather PSE is on or off.
PAE is turned on and off via the
PAE bit of cr4.Even if the total addressable memory is 64GB, individual process are still only able to use up to 4GB. The OS can however put different processes on different 4GB chunks.