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He said processes accessing more than 4 gb, not total memory - aren't individual processes are still limited to 4 gb of memory with PAE?

I don't know the technical reason, but most 32 bit apps on Linux are limited to 2GB (2^31 bytes).

As jsprinkles alluded to in his post, the 2GB limit (or 1GB or 3GB, depending on kernel configuration) is to allow space for the kernel.

Less depending on where the kernel split is. 3 GB under Linux usually.