Can a C compiler generate an executable 64-bits where pointers are 32-bits?

Question

Most programs fits well on <4GB address space but needs to use new features just available on x64 architecture.

Are there compilers/platforms where I can use x64 regi

Answer 1

A simple way to circumvent this is if you'd have only few types for your structures that you are pointing to. Then you could just allocate big arrays for your data and do the indexing with uint32_t.

So a "pointer" in such a model would be just an index in a global array. Usually addressing with that should be efficient enough with a decent compiler, and it would save you some space. You'd loose other things that you might be interested in, dynamic allocation for instance.

Another way to achieve something similar is to encode a pointer with the difference to its actual location. If you can ensure that that difference always fits into 32 bit, you could gain too.