JVM max heap size
Hi,
JVMs have a max heap memory size. I thought until recently that this was limited by the type of addresses supported by jvm / os / hardware - for example 32-bit or 64-bit. So that for a 32-bit JVM the max heap size is 2^32 ~ 3 GB.
Now I have heard that some JVMs can actually have a much larger heap than this allthough only a 32-bit jvm.
Also, I heard that this only applies for Sun Solaris (not sure if any specific version) since it is the only OS not limiting the heap size of the JVM. Is this really true ?
I guess the JVM vendor have implemented some memory address manipulation inside the JVM to facilitate larger heap size than "normal" 32-bit - but is it only Solaris that allows you to do this kind of address manipulation ?
We run on a 64-bit AIX platform with IBM JVM 1.4, but can't get the JVM stable with heap set higher than ~1.7 G. We can't change to 64-bit JVM since the application we run does not support that.
Anyone know if another JVM would run on AIX with higher heap size - at least in theory ?
Thanks for any comments making this more clear to me !
