Physical Address Extension

In computing, Physical Address Extension (PAE) is a processor feature to enable 32-bit IA-32 central processing units (CPUs) to access physical address space larger than 4 gigabytes by extending the paging schema . It allows up to 64 gigabytes of system memory to be addressed by a 32-bit processor.Eric Hammersley, Professional VMware Server (Indianapolis, IN: Wrox/Wiley Pub., 2007), p. 13 

PAE was first introduced with the Intel 32-bit processor Pentium Pro. Since then it has been a feature on all Intel processors except some Pentium M mobile processors. Athlon or K7 is the first processor from AMD supported PAE. Now all AMD processors support PAE. In addition to processor support, PAE requires the operating system (OS) to support it."Microsoft Partners With Sequent for High-End Windows 2000." Computergram International. 1999. HighBeam Research. (December 31, 2014). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-54714335.html  Windows 2000 was the first OS to support PAE.

 Desktop Processors 
+ProcessorsPhysical Addressing Bit WidthIntel Pentium Pro/Pentium II/Pentium III/Pentium II Celeron/Celeron36 bitsIntel Pentium 4/Pentium 4 Celeron/Pentium D/Celeron D36 bitsIntel Core 2/Pentium Dual-Core/Celeron36 bitsIntel Core i3/i5/i7/Celeron/Pentium36/39 bitsAMD Athlon 64/Athlon X2/Sempron/Sempron X240 bitsAMD Athlon/Athlon II/Sempron/Sempron X248 bitsAMD C-5036 bitsAMD APU A4/A5/A6/A8/Athlon/Sempron48 bits

 References 

Category:Computer hardware