> Amusingly, while implementing support for this in Linux, we ran into a bug in Linux’s ARM SMMU support that had been there ever since 52-bit address support was introduced. This was breaking systems with more than 256 TiB of RAM - I wonder why nobody noticed? Either way, Linux now correctly supports standard ARM systems with up to 4 PiB of RAM ;-).
Interesting how working on new technologies helps improve existing things for all users. Sort of reminds me how NASA invests in R&D and those investments eventually come back to military and consumers.
> This was breaking systems with more than 256 TiB of RAM - I wonder why nobody noticed?
Are there even ARM systems with that amount of RAM? I assume it's something in the order of what super computers use, but I don't think any of them are ARM. That doesn't sound that surprising to me that no one noticed if no one uses that much RAM.
Interesting how working on new technologies helps improve existing things for all users. Sort of reminds me how NASA invests in R&D and those investments eventually come back to military and consumers.