From what I understand, a 32bit process can only access 2GB of memory on 32bit windows without the /3GB switch, and that some of that memory is taken up by the OS for its ow
WOW64 allows using 32-bit Windows application on 64-bit Windows, translating 32-bit pointers to real 64-bit pointers. And actually 32-bit addressing should allow accessing 4GB of memory.